{"id":430267,"date":"2026-01-22T16:00:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T16:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/430267\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T16:00:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T16:00:13","slug":"fritz-sets-up-wawrinka-showdown-with-straight-sets-advance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/430267\/","title":{"rendered":"Fritz sets up Wawrinka showdown with straight-sets advance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Those who have designs on going deep at Grand Slams often discuss the importance of not expending too much energy in the early rounds.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ausopen.com\/results#!All?dayId=43229\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MORE: All the scores from Day 5 at AO 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/ausopen.com\/players\/united-states-america\/taylor-fritz\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Taylor Fritz\u2019s<\/a> case at Australian Open 2026, it might be especially important.<\/p>\n<p>Fritz expressed concern about lingering knee pain at the start of the season, and after his first-round win over Valentin Royer said, \u201cI&#8217;m way better than I expected to be after how I felt my first week or so in Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fritz, who again began his new season at the United Cup, then revealed that other injuries surfaced leading into AO 2026.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>The world No.9 is well known for competing hard while hurt \u2013 most famously perhaps in the 2022 Indian Wells final when he beat Rafael Nadal despite a serious ankle complaint \u2013 but starting a campaign banged up is not desirable.<\/p>\n<p>Fritz, then, must have been pleased with Thursday\u2019s second-round showing against Vit Kopriva of Czechia.<\/p>\n<p>The majority of the highlight-reel points went to Kopriva, but Fritz\u2019s consistent baseline hitting and fine serving earned the Californian a 6-1 6-4 7-6(4) victory at John Cain Arena in a tidy one hour, 58 minutes.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ausopen.com\/draws#!mens-singles\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MORE: AO 2026 men&#8217;s singles draw<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was tense,\u201d said Fritz. \u201cI felt like the whole third set, he really raised his level. He was playing really well, just crushing the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Those who have designs on going deep at Grand Slams often discuss the importance of not expending too&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-430267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}