‘Brothers’ Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul: can either of them end America’s wait for a male US Open champion?
Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul may consider themselves ‘brothers’ but the last pair of siblings who won a medal in doubles at the Olympics were two Americans: Mike and Bob Bryan, back at London 2012.
Regardless, Fritz and Paul defeated Adam Pavlasek and Tomas Machac, of the Czech Republic, in straight sets (6-3 6-4) to earn a spot on the podium alongside compatriots Rajeev Ram and Austin Krajicek, who took home the silver, in Paris.
But, unlike Ram and Krajicek, Paul and Fritz usually play in singles, making their third place finish all but unlikely before the start of the summer.
Now, with just a few weeks to go before the US Open begins, Fritz and Paul, who are ranked No. 12 and No. 13 respectively on the ATP Tour’s world rankings, are the USA’s biggest glimmer of hope for an American to win the men’s version of the Grand Slam tournament since Andy Roddick in 2003.
Many would have thought that label would have been attributed to Ben Shelton after he reached the semifinals in last year’s edition of the US Open, when he was stopped by the eventual winner, Novak Djokovic
The duo, who share a close bond, are the two highest ranked Americans on the ATP’s rankings
But after bursting into the spotlight in 2023 after his quarterfinal run at the Australian Open and his displays on home soil, Shelton has only had a fourth-round appearance to show for this year.
He also ranks two spots under Fritz and one below Paul at No. 14. All three Americans are neck-in-neck in the rankings along with Sebastian Korda – the younger brother of women’s golf’s world No. 1, Nelly Korda – who climbed three spots to jump to No. 15.
If Paul wins, t is likely that his girlfriend and model, Paige Lorenze, shows up on the court at Arthur Ashe, posing with the trophy alongside her boyfriend, who she’s been dating since 2022.
Earlier this summer, Lorenze went viral on social media after she broke tradition by joining Paul on the court and posing with his trophy following his win at Queen’s.
The 26-year-old, former competitive skier has a social media following of 639,000 on Instagram and 300,000 on TikTok.
‘My fashion week is the grand slams,’ she once said. Lorenze previously collaborated with Prada and FarFetch.
Before Paul, she had a series of high profile partners including controversial country singer Morgan Wallen and actor Armie Hammer.
Meanwhile, Fritz’s partner, Morgan Riddle, was once dubbed ‘the most famous woman in men’s tennis’ by the New York Times. She met Fritz on the exclusive dating app, Raya.
Riddle also featured on series one of Netflix’s Break Point and, like Lorenze, she has become a high-profile fashion influencer due to the prestigious brands she wears at her beau’s tennis matches such as Hermes, Prada, Gucci, Miu Miu, Max Mara and Ralph Lauren.
At Wimbledon, she started a video series on gameday fashion with one of them reaching 7.1million views. She captioned it: ‘When you start dating a professional tennis player and literally all you do is travel the world, dress cute, drink champagne and go to Wimbledon.’
Riddle also films GRWM (get ready with me) videos, posing in designer outfits and trying to ‘make tennis cool’ in the eyes of her 297k followers on Instagram and 488.7k on TikTok.
‘If his ranking had gone down, they’d say it’s my fault. The only time I really get nervous is when I see him getting nervous,’ she once said.
She attracted headlines during Wimbledon after uploading – and then deleting – Instagram posts seemingly referring to Alexander Zverev‘s allegations of abuse.
They included video that showed her enjoying a drink with the caption ‘when your man wins 4 the girls.’
Earlier, while the match was unfolding, she also posted a picture of the court to her story and wrote, ‘cheer loud ladies’.
Fans quickly looked to join the dots to suggest Riddle was indirectly referring to Fritz’s opponent Zverev, who was last year accused in court documents of physically abusing a woman in 2020.
Earlier this year, he agreed to a settlement in the case, detailing that he would pay Brenda Patea, the mother of his child, $238,351 but he was found not guilty of any wrongdoing (Patea publicly identified herself as the victim in the case).
Less than 24 hours on Riddle has now explained to her 320,000 Instagram followers why she hastily deleted her posts.
‘Regarding my stories yesterday… I took them down as soon as I realized the misunderstanding and how blown out of proportion they had become by the media,’ she said.
‘They were not about anything that’s happened off the tennis court & there’s no bad blood between anyone.’
