Inside the Modern Courtship of Taylor Fritz and Morgan Riddle

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People like to ask the influencer Morgan Riddle if her boyfriend, the top-ranked American tennis player Taylor Fritz, ever gives her lessons. It’s a reasonable question. “I’m like, Hell no,” she says. “I do, like, two lessons, and he’s trying to teach me topspin. I’m like, I can’t even get the ball over the net.” Riddle, who is 28 and naturally Barbie-like, has just arrived at the Lotte New York Palace hotel in midtown Manhattan, where she and Fritz will spend the next few weeks during the US Open. Twenty-seven-year-old Fritz’s rise has been a slow burn, and he reached the finals here in 2024. As the top American player and the number four seed overall, he’s under tremendous pressure to go deep in the tournament again. Though he is drawing ever closer to achieving his first Grand Slam title, the sport’s new kings, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, threaten to perpetually block his path. Still, the goal remains the same: He wants to be a Grand Slam winner. “These are the most important two weeks of the year for me to perform,” he says.

The tennis court is Fritz’s business. Everywhere else, though, is his girlfriend’s zone. Riddle has risen alongside Fritz in the five years since they started dating, becoming a public figure in every realm of their lives outside of the white lines. She is strikingly styled in his box during matches, and her presence invites frequent check-ins from the broadcast cameras. On the grounds of tournaments, she gamely greets the so-called tennis girlies who approach her to confess their adoration. She hosts free local Pilates classes in the week leading up to major tournaments. (“Usually, they book out in, like, 30 seconds,” she tells me.) Riddle films content for TikTok and Instagram in the players’ lounges, appraises local hotels, explores the restaurant scene in tournament cities, and gives previews of new merchandise available for sale at the tournament gift shops. When she went to the Italian Open in Rome this year, she used it as an opportunity to give her YouTube subscribers a pocket history of the papal conclave. For the past three years, the All England Club has contracted her to make a series of fashion videos for the Wimbledon tournament, and at the US Open, she works with Grey Goose to promote the Honey Deuce, the brand’s signature US Open cocktail.

So Riddle, too, experiences an excess of professional pressure when she arrives at a Grand Slam tournament. She is one of the sport’s biggest ambassadors, speaking directly to all those millions of untapped potential fans who don’t know the scoring conventions of tiebreaks but think that tennis skirts are fun.

And she’s in high–performance mode. Last night, her flight from LA, where the two share a home, was delayed eight hours because of a plane-refueling issue, but she bears no trace of post-travel harriedness. Her platinum hair is blown out to perfection and drawn into a meticulous ponytail, her makeup is just so, and her navy-and-white checked puff-sleeve minidress is wrinkle-free. As she settles onto the couch in the lounge of their oversized hotel suite, she holds a posture taut enough to please a Victorian. She apologizes for the mess in the room, of which there is virtually none. Riddle is one of those vigilant travelers who likes to unpack the moment she arrives. At the top of her to-do list for the evening is calling down to reception to request 30 clothes hangers.