Taylor Fritz Stars in Boss Fall Campaign for First Time

It’s been a tough couple of weeks for Taylor Fritz.

The number-one ranked U.S. tennis player just lost his last two matches: the National Bank Open in Toronto to his American rival Ben Shelton followed by the Cincinnati Open to French qualifier Terence Atmare.

But the athlete has gone through tough patches before and always managed to find his way back. That’s what he’s hoping will happen this time as he readies for the U.S. Open where he made it to the finals last year before falling to Jannik Sinner.

“For an American, it’s obviously the biggest two weeks of the year for us,” he said. “I’m really excited just to be back on court at such a massive event for the Americans, and coming back as the defending finalist is going to be great.”

He admitted there will be “a good amount of pressure. But I just kind of look at where the year has gone as a whole, and I’m in a better spot going into the U.S. Open this year than I was last year. So there’s no reason to be nervous. I just need to be confident and take it one match at a time, just like I did there last year, like I did at Wimbledon this year, and kind of get into it and make a run.”

And he’ll work to shake off his recent losses. “I’d say the biggest challenges I’ve had [in my career] is either injuries here and there or certain times where I’m going through bad spells and just playing bad tennis and trying to improve.” His strategy is to keep “pushing through” and fight against the negativity that can wreak havoc on his psyche. “There were definitely times in my career where I thought I was almost getting worse than better, and I was able to turn them around.”

Off the court, Fritz is also busy. He’s been an ambassador for Boss for around a year but he’s now starring in the company’s fall campaign, “Be Your Own Boss.” Fritz will join actor Aaron Pierre, K-pop star S.Coups, Bollywood actor Ishaan Khatter and model Amelia Gray in the campaign.

A film accompanies the campaign, showing the five featured faces traveling through a symbolic tunnel toward a bright light that is intended to represent their achievements and aspirations. There are also portraits of each person in the fall collection. They were photographed by Mikael Jansson with creative direction by Trey Laird and Team Laird.

“I’m really excited to be able to model off the court, something that I’ve been interested in for a while,” Fritz said. “And I’m just super happy to be a part of the whole lineup that’s in the campaign.”

He said that while he spends the bulk of his time in activewear, “I’ve always really enjoyed doing these kind of fashion things,” he said. “I think that’s a big reason why this partnership with Boss works so well and made a lot of sense.”

His favorite piece from the shoot was a leather jacket worn with a brown button-down shirt. “A lot of the stuff I actually wore in the shoot was what I would personally wear.”

He said he likes to be “stylish yet comfy, but also very classy, like nice pants with a tucked-in shirt and nice jacket, something like that.” And his girlfriend, the influencer Morgan Riddle, is generally on board with his fashion choices. “She tries to help here and there, but what I think looks good and what she thinks looks good is actually pretty similar. So we don’t have to argue too much about what I wear.”

Fritz, whose great-great-grandfather was founder of May Department Stores Co., said fashion has become more important to him as he’s gotten older. He said growing up in San Diego, he dressed “very skater/surfer. But once I started traveling and realized that’s not how everyone dresses in the rest of the world, I started to get more into fashion in my own personal style.”

But juggling all these off the court commitments — Fritz was also featured in the Netflix documentary “Break Point” — is also a challenge. “It’s tough,” he admitted. “There’s a lot of just dealing with time management. I have a lot of different things to do on top of training and playing and being in tournaments. But I have a great team around me that that helps make the most of the windows of time. We have to schedule it in a way where I can also still be practicing, or still have as much free time for myself, just to reset.”

When he’s preparing for a tournament, he practices around two hours a day and when he’s between matches, it’s more like a four-hour day, he said.

And for Fritz, he pretty much competes year-round. After the U.S. Open is what he describes as “the most insane stretch of the year for me. I’ll go home to Miami for a bit, and then we’ll have Davis Cup in Delray Beach, then the Lavor Cup [in San Francisco], then I go to Tokyo, to Shanghai, to Riyadh, to Basel to Paris, and then hopefully World Tour finals, and hopefully the Davis Cup finals. That’s all without a break.”

His off season is only around three weeks a year around Christmas.

To remain at his peak and stay healthy with such a grueling schedule, Fritz said he travels with a “physio” who has worked with him for eight years. “An hour before practice, an hour after practice every day and extra if I feel really beat up. I spend an exceptional amount of time just taking care of my body every day.”