Taylor Fritz slams tennis fans who ‘can’t read’ over his recent comments

Taylor Fritz made some recent comments about the potential of making the tennis schedule easier and making it a bit more like golf. The idea is that the top 100-120 players would participate in the Grand Slam events along with the Masters 1000 tournaments and a handful of other events. The players ranked outside the top 120 would be more involved in the ATP 250 and 500 tournaments.

Players with a lower ranking, however, could work their way up into the more lucrative tournaments by winning in the more minor tournaments. Fritz believes that players can play fewer events, possibly 12-14 in a full year, and be fresher for the tourneys they do play in, but because the more elite players are the ones involved in the majors and Masters 1000s, this will draw more eyes to tennis.

One big issue, though, is that the players ranked outside the top 120 won’t have a chance to win big money taking a Masters 1000 or Grand Slam. Tennis is already expensive enough for a professional player with having to pay for travel, coaching, and so on, and being held back by playing lesser tournaments is not going to help an up-and-coming player make enough to keep participating in professional tennis.

Taylor Fritz causes confusion and then does the opposite of apologizing

But while Taylor Fritz says he was not attempting to convey that there should basically be a major league and minor league level to tennis, and he may have somewhat misspoken in his original comments, Fritz did make his original intent confusing. In an interview with The Age, Fritz said of the top 100 players or so playing in the more lucrative events and those ranked lower playing in 250-500 tournaments, “It’s a really good idea, and I think that we should have separate tours.”

“Separate tours” is the key there, and there are not many ways of misreading that. Maybe Taylor Fritaz simply does not know the meaning of “separate.”

Fritz continued by saying, “If you’re on the main, top tour, you should be set to play all the big events, and they should all be slightly bigger-draw events to get basically everybody in the top 100 in, and I think that’s honestly all we should play.”

But when tennis fans responded negatively on social media, Taylor Fritz took to X (the artist formerly known as X) to, for all intents and purposes, call those disputing him stupid. He alluded to those who “can’t read” when, in fact, Fritz literally said there should be two separate tours.

Maybe instead of trying to make people feel dumb, Fritz could just apologize for how he originally phrased his thoughts. Or maybe he was confused by his own thoughts and could not express them correctly. Either way, the negative reaction to what he said was caused by him not speaking well enough to be understood.