Much has been said in recent years about the “return” of American men’s tennis. While this resurgence is somewhat difficult to outline and define—there’s not really a hard metric with which to measure it—it can perhaps be understood as an attempt to reach the kind of dominance benchmark of the glory days of the 1990s and 2000s, when American players like Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, and Andy Roddick dominated the game. (The real bell-ringing moment, of course, would happen when an American man next wins a Grand Slam tournament—a feat that hasn’t been achieved since Roddick clinched the US Open back in 2003.
) But this particular threshold is flawed, if not dismissive—just look harder at the current numbers. For the first time since 1997 , there are now five American men in the top 20 on the ATP Tour: Taylor Fritz (12), Ben Shelton (13), Tommy Paul (14), Sebastian Korda (16), and Frances Tiafoe (20), who reattained this level just a few days ago by making it to the finals of the Cincinnati Open, where he fell to world number one Jannik Sinner. As I see it: We are so back! Fritz, 26, has been the top-ranked American male for the past few seasons (with both Shelton and Paul giving him a run for his money) and, statistically, is the guy with the best shot of ending the American mens’ two-decade Slam drought.
Of Fritz’s eight tour championships—which include a victory over Rafael Nadal in the finals of the prestigious Indian Wells tournament in 2022—two hav.