Taylor Fritz outlasts Frances Tiafoe in thriller to reach US Open final

Friends Taylor Fritz and Francis Tiafoe battled back-and-forth for five sets, fighting to be the first American man to reach a Grand Slam final in 15 years.

It was a battle of nerves.

And when Fritz finally won it — Tiafoe cracking under pressure in a night sure to haunt him for awhile — the usually laid-back Californian let out an uncharacteristic roar on the court. And fought back tears in the aftermath — the good kind.

Fritz earned them with a 4-6, 7-5, 4-6, 6-4, 6-1 come-from-behind win at Arthur Ashe Stadium.

“When I’m really happy, I cry at happy endings of movies and not at sad stuff. So yeah, it’s just joy, the crowd cheering and that realization, like, ‘Wow, I’m in the finals of the U.S. Open,’ ” Fritz said. “It’s such a lifelong dream come true, something I’ve worked my whole life to be in this situation. Just realizing that got me a little bit choked up.”

Fritz was supposed to be the hitter and Tiafoe the runner.

But in a game with more long rallies than a presidential campaign, it was a 31-shot slugfest in the fourth set that visibly took the legs from Tiafoe.

And without his greatest weapon, Fritz was merciless in taking advantage.

“A lot of it was just about handling the moment and the pressure,” said Fritz, who came into the week 0-4 in Grand Slam quarterfinals but is now the first American man in a major final since Andy Roddick in 2009. It’ll be the first in Flushing Meadows since 2006.

Fittingly, it came with Andy Roddick — the last U.S. man to win, back in 2003 — looking on from the suites.

Now Fritz has a chance to finally end that drought Sunday versus No. 1 Jannik Sinner.

In what was the first All-American semifinal since 2005, the friends and compatriots were different in many ways — in their games and in their backgrounds.

Tiafoe is the high-energy, uber-athletic son of Sierra Leonean immigrants, who at times slept in the tennis center his father served as a maintenance worker.

Fritz is the laconic hard-hitting son of two tennis pros, his mother a former top-10 player and one of the heirs to the Macy’s fortune.

Now the two friends are leading a rebirth. But it was a galling ending for Tiafoe.

He fell to 7-14 in fifth sets, and 1-7 against Fritz on the tour, having dropped the last seven straight.

Fritz hasn’t lost to Tiafoe since their first meeting in 2016.

“Oh, man. It’s tough. It’s really, really tough. Really, really tough to swallow. This one’s gonna hurt really, really bad,” Tiafoe said. “I thought I was the better player, for sure. In the fourth, just had some cramps. I felt like my body kind of shut down. Probably had a lot to do with nerves. Ultimately, nerves got the better of me.”

Fritz broke early when Tiafoe spiked a return into the net, and took a quick 3-0 lead out of the gate. Tiafoe took the next five games, and the first set, 6-4.

Fritz broke at love to take the second set, 7-5, winning 23 straight points on his serve, and five straight love games on his serve.

But Tiafoe bounced back to take the third set, 6-4.

Fritz went up 4-3 on serve in the fourth, holding thanks to winning a 31-shot rally.

That took something out of Tiafoe.

“In that moment when I went over to the towel box, I bent over. I didn’t want to bend over, I had to,” Fritz said. “I looked over at him and he didn’t go hands to knees or anything like that. I was like, ‘OK, I know I feel awful, he has to feel a little tired.’ ”

Tiafoe had three double-faults in his next two service games, and Fritz got the first break of the set in the tenth game, winning 6-4 to even the match at two sets apiece.

The fifth set was a requiem.

Tiafoe, who went 20 of 31 on his second serve in both the third and fourth sets, was 0-for-9 in the fifth.

He got outscored 25-9 in that fifth-set collapse.

“The moment, I got ahead of myself, and something I’m definitely going to learn from,” Tiafoe said. “Promise not gonna happen to me again.”