No. 12 seed Taylor Fritz cruised past No. 4 seed Alexander Zverev in the quarter-finals of the US Open to book the first Grand Slam semi-final appearance on Tuesday.

“I’ve had a lot of looks at Grand Slam quarter-finals over the past couple of years, and today just felt different,” an ebullient Fritz said post-match. “I really felt like it was my time to take it a step further.”

Fritz, 26, ousted Zverev 7-6 (7-2), 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7-3) for the first time in five career meetings. This continues arguably the finest season of the American’s career.

Fritz reached the quarter-finals at both the Australian Open and Wimbledon this year in addition to reaching the fourth round at the French Open. By beating Zverev, he became the first American man since Andre Agassi in 1999 with four Grand Slam victories against ATP top-10 opponents in a single calendar year.

He peaked in the ATP rankings last year at No. 5 and reached the quarter-finals at the 2023 US Open. Now, he can call himself a Grand Slam semi-finalist.

“It’s cool I’m in the semis. But I very much have the mindset of ‘the job’s not done,” Fritz said. “A question I got asked pretty much every time I lost in my quarter-finals was, ‘What’s it going to take to go further?’

“The answer I gave was always: Just keep putting myself in these situations, and I’ll become more comfortable in these situations and get better. That’s definitely what happened now. The quarter-finals didn’t feel like, I don’t know, this big thing to me like it has been, I guess, in the past.”

Fritz will face the winner of fellow American Frances Tiafoe and the Bulgarian Gregor Dimitrov in the semi-final on Friday. “That would be crazy,” Fritz said when asked about a possible matchup with Tiafoe.

It’s been a strong showing for the American men at the US Open so far, as Tiafoe and Fritz were joined by Tommy Paul and Brandon Nakashima in the round of 16.

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No American men have won a Grand Slam since Andy Roddick won the US Open in 2004, but Fritz and Tiafoe have a golden chance to snap the streak.

Now that Fritz has gotten over the semi-final hump, anything is possible. “We would never talk about, ‘Hey, you haven’t been to the semi-finals of a Slam before,’ because you’re not really breeding the positivity factor to it,” Fritz’s coach Michael Russell said.

“It’s more about, ‘You’ve been in this position before and come out here and use your weapons that you have, and use the new weapons that we’re trying to create, and just go out there and play your game, use the crowd, love the excitement and the actual competition and battle,’ which he does, and just go feed off it.”