Every athlete has that one moment they will never forget, a moment that stays with them the rest of their career.
For Taylor Fritz, that moment came at the 2022 BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells.
Now an established star on the ATP Tour, Fritz was still a rising hopeful in 2022 when he came to, in essence, his hometown tournament at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. He walked away with the biggest win of his career and his first win at an ATP 1000 event.
“It was great. I feel like I was playing really good tennis to start that year,” Fritz said recalling the big win in a desert where he spent much of his junior years. “I felt confident, I felt like I had a lot to prove back then to myself, because I wasn’t ranked as high, but I felt like my level was there.”
“It was, yeah, one of the best, if not the best, week of my career,” Fritz added.
Fritz, whose father Guy is a teaching and coaching legend in the desert, has now won 10 titles on the ATP. Just 28, Fritz is actually a 10-year veteran on the tour now, something he looks back on as almost two separate careers.
“I think for me I feel like over the last, like, four years it’s probably just been a big shift in kind of how I go about what I’m doing and how I prepare for matches, you know, kind of get into a tournament,” said Fritz, who won two grass court titles in 2025 and also reached one hardcourt finals in Dallas. “I feel like kind of just an entirely different career almost the last couple of years from the first, like, five or six I was on tour. So still always trying to learn and pick up on new stuff.”
Dallas was again a friendly tournament for Fritz last month, as he reached the finals before falling to Ben Shelton. That result helped push Fritz to seventh in the ATP rankings, but he is without a win this season and just 9-6 in matches. Still, Fritz says 2026 has been good for him, and he’s looking for more in the back-to-back events at Indian Wells and Miami.
“I obviously didn’t play the week of Acapulco, so I kind of gave myself some time to rest and have a good training week in L.A., and just, you know, get out here nice and early and start getting ready,” he said. “So the next couple of days are going to be really important to kind of figure out the conditions and get used to the courts. But I think I’m feeling pretty good.”
While Fritz smiles when he says the 2022 win at the BNP Paribas Open seems like it was just two years ago even though it was four years ago, those three Indian Wells tournaments since that win have not been great for Fritz. The year after his win he reached the quarterfinals at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, but in 2024 and 2025 he was eliminated in the fourth round.
But as this year’s tournament begins, Fritz believes he can relay on what he learned in the first half of his career about learning to win while focusing on other issues.
“Obviously now it’s more of a battle with, I’d say, physically just being there as opposed to before it was more about being able to practice and always continue to improve and put all the time in on court,” Fritz said. “Now I think it’s more about just the level is going to be there. I just need to be physically able to give everything in matches.”
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Taylor Fritz looks to relive ‘best week’ of his career at Indian Wells
Reporting by Larry Bohannan, Palm Springs Desert Sun / Palm Springs Desert Sun
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
