NEW YORK – As he watched one last errant forehand from his higher-ranked, more-accomplished
U.S. Open
opponent land wide,
Taylor Fritz
dropped his neon-colored racket, clenched both fists and screamed, “Come on!”

Fritz gathered himself and his equipment, walked to the net for a hug with No. 4 Alexander Zverev, who twice was a Grand Slam runner-up, then stepped to the center of Arthur Ashe Stadium, spread his arms wide and yelled again, “Come on!”

After years of climbing the rankings, of becoming the top American man in tennis, of coming close to making a breakthrough at one of his sport’s four most important events, Fritz finally came through at home, beating Zverev 7-6 (2), 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (3) on Tuesday at Flushing Meadows to reach a major semifinal for the first time.

The 12th-seeded Fritz, a 26-year-old from California, entered the day with an 0-4 record in Slam quarterfinals.

“I’ve had a lot of looks at quarterfinals over the last couple of years, and today just felt different,” Fritz told the crowd that supported him throughout the win, including with frowned-upon applause after some of Zverev’s first-serve faults. “I really felt like it was my time to take it a step further.”

Now he is headed to the final four at the U.S. Open, where he will meet either No. 9 Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria or No. 20 Frances Tiafoe of the United States. Those two were scheduled to play each other on Tuesday night.

“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 quarterfinals was, ‘What’s it going to take to go further?’ And 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 quarterfinals didn’t feel like, I don’t know, this big thing to me like it has been, I guess, in the past.”

A Fritz-Tiafoe semifinal — “That could be crazy,” Fritz said — would be the first between a pair of American men at any major since 2005, when Andre Agassi defeated Robby Ginepri in New York.

No American man has won a Grand Slam singles trophy since Andy Roddick triumphed at the U.S. Open in 2003.

Fritz used his usual blend of big serving, winning 20 of 21 points when his first serves landed in during the fourth set, and big forehands, but he also was effective at the net — winning 16 of 24 points when he pushed forward — and returned well enough to accumulate 10 break points.

“There’s still work to be done, but his transition game is getting better. The fact he’s seeing it pay off, especially here at the U.S. Open in some big points … he’s starting to buy into it and believe it,” said Fritz’s coach, Michael Russell, specifically mentioning a volley that won a 24-stroke exchange to make it 5-2 in the concluding tiebreaker. “It’s good to see. That’s a big step that we’ve been really emphasizing for him to win (at) these bigger stages. You can’t just serve and be on the baseline.”