Taylor Fritz speaks out after Wimbledon plea went ignored by supervisor

Taylor Fritz has spoken out for the first time since his first-round match was suspended against his will. The No. 5 seed forced a deciding fifth set against dangerous 6ft 8" French star Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard on Monday night around 10.15pm - 45 minutes before the 11pm curfew kicked in.

The American seemed keen to carry his momentum into the fifth set but the supervisor came to the court and ultimately decided to halt the match, asking both players to return on Tuesday, even though Fritz wanted to continue. He still stormed back to win 6-7(6) 6-7(8) 6-4 7-6(6) 6-4 the following day, and told the Court 1 crowd that he thought they would have had time to complete the match on Monday.

After the tense first-round clash was held overnight, Fritz took to Instagram to suggest that Mpetshi Perricard was the reason they couldn't attempt to finish the fifth set in one night. "They would've let us play if my opponent agreed to, I said I wanted to, he didn't," he wrote in a comment.

In a conversation with fellow American tennis star Tommy Paul, the world No. 5 explained that, because both players couldn't agree, the supervisor was the one who made the final decision and suspended play.

Fritz clearly wasn't happy with the decision, but that didn't stop him from getting the job done on Tuesday. He broke Mpetshi Perricard in the final game to seal victory, completing a comeback from two sets down.

Afterwards, the two-time Wimbledon quarter-finalist told the crowd: "I mean it's obviously not ideal.

"I felt like, you know, if we weren't going to have time to finish the fifth set them absolutely I think it makes sense not to [continue] but we're having sets about as long as you can possibly play sets and they were still in the time frame that we had last night to play the fifth.

"So I just, you know, I obviously wanted to play it. But either way, I felt confident coming back today and getting it done as well."

He may not have been able to pull off the upset, but on Monday night, Mpetshi Perricard broke the record for the fastest serve speed ever seen at Wimbledon, firing a 151mph serve down the court.

Fritz somehow managed to win the point, and he admitted that he sent his coaching team a brutal message after getting the historic serve back in play.

"The funny thing is, I always tell my coaches that sometimes they say maybe I should try to serve body, and I always tell them I think body serves are awful, I never win when I do it," he added.

"I sent a video to my coach saying, 'There we go, he served the fastest serve in the history of Wimbledon right into my chest and I won the point so there's your proof, body serves are bad!'"

Fritz, who won his fourth Eastbourne Open title over the weekend, was feeling the pressure on one of his favourite surfaces. But he's safely through to round two to face Gabriel Diallo.

"I think obviously this is a huge, huge week for me with the recent results on grass so I was thinking about that in this match. It put a lot of pressure on me because I really didn't want to go out in the first round," he confessed.

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