American tennis star Taylor Fritz took aim at the lightning-fast court speed and unpredictable ball behavior after his third-round win at the 2025 Canadian Open. Despite cruising past Canadian Gabriel Diallo in straight sets, 6-4, 6-2, Fritz highlighted that the playing environment has made consistency nearly impossible for him and for others on tour.
Taylor Fritz Voices Frustration Over Court Speed and Ball Control
Fritz, who is seeded second at the tournament, has been in strong form during the North American hard-court swing. But following his latest win, he shed light on the extreme difficulty in maintaining control due to what he described as one of the fastest court surfaces and hardest-to-handle tennis balls on the calendar.
In his post-match press conference following the third-round victory, Fritz revealed just how unpredictable the conditions in Montreal have felt. “I’ve been having an incredibly hard time just putting the ball in the court,” he said.
“Typically, when I’m missing shots, I know exactly why I’m missing… In my first-round match, there’s balls going 10 feet long that feel exactly the same as the one that was just right before that went in.”
The American highlighted the erratic nature of the ball response as a major issue, noting that what might look like simple errors are actually the result of inconsistent bounce and speed.
“The conditions have been really hard to just play good tennis. There’s a lot of ugly tennis. There’s a lot of people double-faulting, a lot of mistakes,” he added.
Fritz specifically called out the Wilson U.S. Open balls being used at the tournament, describing them as the most difficult to control on tour. “They’re not bad, it’s just that the balls we’ve been playing with for the last couple of years are softer and more dead,” he said. “They slow down off the bounce, they hold on your strings longer. You play with these, they shoot off your racquet, they jump off the court faster.”
Comparing the conditions in Toronto to those in Washington, D.C., where he also recently competed, Fritz said, “I thought D.C. was pretty fast. This is faster, coming through the court even more. It’s just tough to control.”
Fritz will now face 19th seed Jiří Lehečka in the fourth round. This will be their fourth meeting on the ATP Tour, with the American holding a dominant 3-0 head-to-head record. The winner of this match will face either sixth seed Andrey Rublev or 20th seed Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in the quarterfinals.
