Taylor Fritz defeats Stefanos Tsitsipas for 20th Top 10 win of career, first at a Grand Slam

American Taylor Fritz has pulled off the biggest upset of the men’s draw at the Australian Open, taking out No. 7 seed Stefanos Tsitsipas in the fourth round on Sunday, 7-6 (3), 5-7, 6-3, 6-3.

And it’s a triple career milestone for Fritz.

First of all, it’s the 20th Top 10 win of his career—he now has a 20-33 career record against Top 10 players, but he's a much better 14-12 against them over the last two-and-a-half-years.

Second of all, it’s the first Top 10 win of his career at a Grand Slam, having been 0-11 against the elite across the four biggest tournaments in the world going into this match.

And finally, he's now through to the quarterfinals of the Australian Open for the first time, and has now been to the last eight at three of the four majors in his career, having previously gone this far at Wimbledon in 2022 and the US Open in 2023.

Prior to Sunday the highest seed out on the men's side had been No. 8 seed Holger Rune, who fell in the second round.

Tsitsipas led the pair’s head-to-head coming in, 3-1, but Fritz’s win had come in their most recent meeting—in the quarterfinals of Monte Carlo last year—and the American came out strong in this one, too, toughing out the 50-minute first set on a tie-break.

After 10 consecutive holds of serve to start the second set, Tsitsipas got the first break of the match for 6-5 and served it out to tie it up at one set all. But Fritz saved his best tennis of the day for last, hitting a combined 24 winners to just four unforced errors across the third and fourth sets to clinch a four-set victory.

“I’m really happy,” Fritz said. “I think start to finish I played well. Especially I’m super happy about the way I finished it—the last three games of the match I really, really turned it on, almost like I was in a trance and everything. Just felt good. I felt like I knew exactly what shot to hit, the right decision to make on every ball.

“It’s great. It’s been a while since I’ve had that feeling, so it gives me a lot of confidence.”

Fritz’s reward for his victory over the 2023 Australian Open runner-up is a quarterfinal match-up against 2023 (and 10-time) Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic, a 6-0, 6-0, 6-3 winner earlier in the day against Adrian Mannarino.