2024 US Open Men’s Semi-Finals Preview

hey guys in today's video I'm going to preview the 2024 US Open men's semi-finals I'm going to start with the bottom half of the draw Fritz versus TFO first of all it's fantastic for American tennis that we have not only two American male players in the semi-finals but also two American female players but for you guys that watch my prediction video you know that I picked Fritz to lose to bartini in the second round and now that looks like a horrible pick to make but let me explain why I made that pick see if you remember wimble I thought Fritz had a golden opportunity to make the Wimbledon final he beat Zev in the fourth round which I thought was a great win five set match and then he played MTI in the quarters and remember jokic was not on the top of his game and the winner of Fritz MTI was going to play jovic in the semis and Fritz ended up losing to MTI in five sets and I thought that Fritz was going to take this loss hard and he did he went to the Olympics lost to MTI again he did win the bronze medal in double but at the hardcore tournaments Fritz did not play well he lost to Corda in the second round in Montreal and then lost to Nakashima in the first round in Cincinnati on the other hand bertini had played really well on Clay won at two tournaments in a row so for me this made sense to pick bertini over Fritz because Fritz was struggling but I have to tell you out of all the top Americans and we have five of them in the top 20 I always thought that Fritz was going to have the best career I always thought that Fritz stood slightly above them as far as his level is concerned and I was very impressed with Fritz winning Indian Wells that's a huge tournament on us soil on Masters 1000 and Fritz has that in his bag which the other players don't so Fritz has incredible potential to do big things on the tennis court one of the best serves in the world moves well very good forehand Rock Solid backhand can come in and finish points off at the net he's just a great allaround player with big weapons I saw Fritz's girlfriend share a note that Taylor wrote to himself a while back and I'm to paraphrase he said you're ranked 40 in the world but you're much better than that get you act together and start maximizing your potential and at this US Open being on the bottom half of the draw especially with jokovic going out early which is such a huge barrier for a lot of these players in Grand Slam tournaments Fritz has a golden opportunity to make the final and he's capitalizing on it he played an exceptional match against Z Vera in the quarterfinals playing aggressive dictating the points serving well and playing his best tennis when he needed it the most now Zev on the other hand is a very interesting story because he did not play well in this match he said that this is the worst he hit his backhand in his entire career he was not only missing backhands out by a lot but even when he tried to get the backhand in play trying to hit it soft he was dumping back hands into the net he was missing easy back ends when the ball was right there for him he said that normally you can wake him up at 3:00 a.m. and he could make one back after another but for some reason in this match his back end was simply not working and if you compare Z's level in the match against Fritz to how he played at the French Open especially in that Rafa match where Z was hitting the best I've ever seen him hit off the ground and even at some portions in the final against alcaras compared that to how Zer was playing from the Baseline in the match against Fritz there's a stark difference and if you look at Z Results post the French Open final I think that that final hurt him a lot because he was very close to winning a Grand Slam Tournament that's the only thing that zerb needs to complete his fabulous career is a grand slam title and he was very close a couple of times and he couldn't get the job done and I think this is still somewhere in the back of his mind because I watched him play at Wimbledon I thought he didn't play well there lost to Fritz then I watched him play in the final in Hamburg which I thought was a very poor performance mentally speaking and I thought he played pretty well Cincinnati almost beating CER in the semi so that's why I picked him to go through the final on a bottom half of the draw but something's off with Zev but just like Fritz was able to turn his form around and start playing his best tennis at the US Open I think Z can do that too it's going to be interesting to see how Z does for the remainder of the year because he's doing well rankings wise if he would have beaten Fritz he would have gone up to number two in the world and demitro versus tofo was a shame that it ended early because both of these guys are so fun to watch I made a video yesterday on tfo's aren't Orthodox forehand backhand and surf technique I recommend that you check this out I went deep into technique I studied TFO Strokes back in the junior days I'm going to link that video in the pin comment and TFO did play extremely well against dimitro as I said previously it's almost as if TFO sometimes has too many Tools in his bag and he ends up making poor choices on the court and makes a lot of unforced Errors so to me it's all about how clean TFO K play A match is going to determine how successful he's going to be because he does use the crowd to his Advantage but if he can stay away from low percentage shots if you can play high percentage tennis he's got a very good chance to beat Fritz now it's going to be tough to predict who's going to win that match because if you look at the head-to-head it's 61 for Fritz now the graphic there says 63 Fritz but they're counting two ITF junior matches that TFO won but on tour TFO won the first time they played in 2016 at Indian Wales and after that Fritz won six in a row so Fritz has the upper hand against TFO mentally speaking and you could make the logical argument that Fritz is going to win the important points and come out as the winner in this match but this tournament has been so crazy there's been so many upsets now look I made the mistake of not picking Fritz over bertini and I'm not going to make that mistake twice I paid my price dearly by having my bottom half of the draw busted so this time I am going to pick Fritz to beat TFO and make the US Open final now speaking of surprises Draper ends up beating diau in straight sets and Draper is a player with huge potential not only does he have one of the best servers in the world but he also happens to be Lefty and hits a heavy Top Spin forehand and is able to open up the court and when you have that combination a great Lefty serve the ability to open the court as a lefty you're going to be tough to deal with the manau didn't have much of a chance draer played an excellent match I will note however that de manau was not on the absolute top of his game there is still possibly something going on with his hip an injury that he sustained at Wimbledon and let me just say this on deau there is a thing going on on the internet that deau doesn't deserve to be in a top 10 and that he's a terrible player with no weapons and that his spin rate on the forehand is super low compared to the other guys people don't understand the quality of player that you have to be to be able to beat jokovic remember Deon hour beat jokovic earlier this year at the United cup he also beats Zev he also beat Nadal on clay in Spain of course it's not prime Nadal but still deau is an amazing player and yes he might not have the same power as alarz he doesn't have the same serve as verev but he has his strengths has his weaknesses and he manages to win matches with what he has and he does an exceptional job he's one of the fastest guys on tour and Tennis is not all about hitting winners it is not an accident that deau is a top 10 player and has the chance to finish in the top eight and make the year and Championship so when I see disrespect thrown in the direction of diau I don't like seeing that deau is a phenomenal tennis player despite not having the same weapons as some of the other guys on tour now CER against meddev went as I expected I feel like CER is finding the form that he had earlier this year he is the hardest ball Striker on tour the speed of his shot the weight of his shot is too much to handle even for somebody as good as Medvedev now meddev did do well yesterday especially in the second set some of those backand to backand crosscourt rallies were absolutely insane Med is an absolute wall back there and he tried different things in the match in the press conference he actually thought that he played well but when Center plays like this is just a tough hurdle to overcome so Draper against Center and the semis these guys are friends and head-to-head is one zero for Draper okay so logically you have to go with Draper don't you well this was a while back on grass and it doesn't really mean that much because playing the semi finals of a grand slam for the first time is not an easy thing that's going to be a tough match for Draper and I do expect straight set Victory from Center