How Taylor Fritz Redefines Masculinity
The American men's tennis star, breaking expectations, has written his own definitions for "High T" activities.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — As he has for many other tennis writers, Taylor Fritz has become one of my favorite players to speak with about any tennis topic. Fritz is always willing to dig into details and unpack tennis topics big and small with an eager depth and meticulousness.
Fritz clearly relishes explaining and talking through the things he cares about, and tennis is one of them—as I wrote about during his semifinal run at Wimbledon last year.
Fritz’s gift of gab overfloweth such that he often spends his spare time speaking to audiences of a couple hundred viewers on his Twitch channel, holding court on whatever topics he wants and answering questions—about tennis and whatever else—as he indulges in another passion of his: playing video games.
I’ve watched some of the streams, particularly during his pre-gaming Q&A portions with fans. Fritz’s answers and updates can be valuable on a reporting level, particularly when he provides information about his progress with injury recoveries. But I mostly want to keep what Fritz says on there somewhat off-the-record—as much as that’s ever possible for online content—to allow Fritz some space to keep the candor he feels in that more casual setting as much as possible.
His comments have been clipped and aggregated a few times—including a recent lengthy ramble on the balls used at Indian Wells, which Fritz lamented when several people on social media launched ill-conceived broadsides against him.
“Me getting on stream and thoughtfully answering questions for fans isn’t something I am doing me, but for the fans that support me enough to want to come in and ask me questions live,” Fritz wrote on Twitter. “If people want to misinterpret and turn the things I say against me and turn it into unwarranted hate towards me then maybe it’s not worth it.”
Courtney Nguyen, herself a Twitch streamer as well, wrote at Forty Deuce about Fritz and their shared concerns about the medium as she covered Indian Wells earlier this month.
As a fellow streamer – shout out my dedicated six-person audience! – I know how complicated it can be to, in real time, try to field questions while also being wary of getting clipped. Streams are supposed to be casual safe-spaces, and if they’re not, well, we’re just not going to say anything interesting. I asked Fritz what it was like to see his clip spread on social media:
“I normally just delete the VODs of the stuff as soon as the stream is over,” Fritz said, “because I kind of want it to just be more exclusive to the people that come by and watch, and I don’t really want all of the clips just circulating online.”
While I also want to support Fritz’s wishes for a degree of ephemerality in his streams, there’s one moment of his streaming, away from any tennis talk, that I’ve wanted to ask him about when I had my own chance to speak with him this week at the Miami Open.
My friend Ebcak, who is a diehard Fritz fan and watches his streams fastidiously, shared with me a moment from Fritz’s World of Warcraft play that he especially enjoyed; I also thought it was an amusing and interesting insight into the unique figure Fritz cuts as a male sports star.
As he discussed his most successful game style in the combat-heavy game World of Warcraft, he repurposed the manosphere term “High T”—meaning elevated testosterone—into something healthier, at least in a video game context.
“Guys, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: Healing in games, a lot of people say that it’s like a ‘girl’ thing to do. [To] heal, play a support in League, and be an enchanter/healer.
“Healing is High T. Healing for the boys is High T activity, alright? Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. My healer in retail1 is literally called ‘High T.’ Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: it is High T.”
The “Healing is High T” concept has become a refrain for Fritz; he repurposed it again when he streamed after this year’s Australian Open.
“My blood test came back, and my T is off the charts,” Fritz said in January. “It’s ‘cause I’m healing for the bros.”
When I asked Fritz about “Healing is High T” after his first win in Miami on Friday—and if it might inform how he deals with his own injuries—he struggled to suppress his giggles before answering this unexpected question as best he could.
“It’s just, in the games I play, there’s a lack of people that play the healing role,” Fritz began. “I feel like that’s typically known—stereotyped—in the gaming community as being a ‘girl’ role to play. And, you know, I do really well on it. I’ve climbed [to] a lot of my highest ratings in that specific game [by] healing. So it’s just a joke I say—it is a very manly thing to do. High T is healing your homies.”
When I asked Fritz if he felt as if he was “pushing back on a certain kind of masculinity,” he was less certain.
“I just think it’s funny,” Fritz said, still laughing. “I’m not sure.”
From my vantage point, at least, Fritz has a security in his masculinity which comes through regularly, piercing and subverting the expectations one might have for one of the most dominant American male tennis players of this decade.
This week, he told Tennis Channel that the last time he’d cried during a movie was earlier this month, at the Pixar animated film “Hoppers.”
While other players were in the Maldives in serene but sterile surrounds, Fritz and his longtime girlfriend Morgan Riddle—whose career he has also supported throughout their relationship—went to Tokyo.
One memorable night, Fritz gamely went along when Riddle’s idea for a night out on the town was “the muscle girl bar,” allowing himself to get carried and slapped across the face by one of the women working there.
“That was hilarious, that was great,” Fritz said. “It was probably one of the most fun things. We had no idea what to expect; I think Morgan had seen one of our friends that had done it, and it just looked really funny. It was just kind of a thing that, when you get a group together there, it’s pretty hard not to just laugh at how absurd everything is. I hope to go back and bring all the guys when we’re there for the tournament.”
Taylor Fritz plays the second match on the main stadium on Sunday afternoon at the Miami Open, facing his close friend Reilly Opelka.
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“Retail” is the term for the latest version of the game.
This is a howl. Definitely makes me more of a Fritz fan.
His thoughtfulness about tennis is great, but this is even more endearing. I am kind of glad that he doesn't self-consciously conceptualise his sense of masculinity and by just being and acting as he does he demonstrates a different masculinity through his actions and life choices.