Taylor Fritz overcomes 'incredibly tough' wind, old friend Tommy Paul to win again in Delray Beach

Fellow Americans Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul have been facing off since they were in middle school, but their match in Delray Beach on Monday was the first time they had met in a final as pros.

The always-fickle weather gods of South Florida didn’t seem impressed by this milestone moment.

First, on Sunday, they sent down an entire day’s worth of rain, more than enough to postpone the match until the following afternoon. Then, on Monday, they whipped up so much wind that both players had to throw out whatever tactics they had come to the courts with, and basically wing it.

“I had a long list of things I needed to do well, but I think a lot of that went out the window when we realized the conditions for the match,” Fritz said. “It’s incredibly tough to do what you want to do when it’s windy like this.”

Yet over the course of an hour and 40 often-scrappy minutes, Fritz was able to impose just enough of his will on his friend and Davis Cup teammate to escape with a 6-2, 6-3 win.

If Fritz was worried about how to handle the conditions in the early going, Paul went a long way to helping him relax. Maybe it was the odd day off on Sunday. Maybe it was the fact that he had won the title in Dallas the week before and hadn’t had any time off. Either way, Paul came out flat and frazzled.

He shanked a forehand at break point to go down 1-3. He squandered three break points—one by drilling a makable backhand pass into the net—at 2-4. And he was broken again in the final game of the set. Paul’s mood wasn’t helped when the chair umpire handed him a time violation warning. He could still be heard complaining about it two changeovers later.

After a mind-clearing between-set break, Paul shrugged off his sluggishness and began to work the rallies to his advantage. He mixed in low slices to get the 6-foot-5 Fritz to bend, then upped the pace with his topspin forehand. The combination worked well enough to earn him two break points at 2-2, and two more at 3-3. With the crowd willing him to force a third set, it felt like Paul needed just one more winning shot to turn the match around.

He never found it. Instead, it was Fritz who fought off all seven break points he faced on the day. He saved one with a blistering forehand winner at 2-2, and another with an unreturnable serve at 3-3.

Finally, with Paul serving at 3-4, Fritz came up with the crucial winner that his opponent had been searching for. On his third break point, Fritz dipped a backhand pass at Paul’s feet, then followed it with a winning forehand strike to make it 5-3. From there, Fritz held in a hurry for his seventh career title, and second in a row in Delray Beach.

“I played the big points better, and that’s what made the difference,” he said.

This was Fritz’s sixth straight final-round victory, and evidence of why this famously good competitor is a tough out on these types of occasions. While he’s clearly not the athlete Paul is, it was Fritz who managed to stay in important points with his scrambling along the baseline. It’s not the most graceful defense, but it works well on a windy day, when the ability to put one more ball in the court is at a premium.

The weather gods had their way with the first Fritz-Paul final. Neither man made 60% of his first serves, and they combined for just 14 winners. But when the match was in the balance, it was Fritz who did what he needed to do.