When you’re playing video games against a professional athlete, you could be forgiven for hoping their rigorous training and competition schedule might prevent them from getting really, really good at games. Sadly, this isn’t the case for Taylor Fritz, the tennis star who destroyed me in Mario Tennis Fever.
Fritz is one of the best real-life, non-video-game tennis players in the world — he’s currently ranked number 8 among the thousands of hopefuls who take to the courts in tournaments across the globe. He holds an Olympic Bronze medal for the U.S., and 10 career titles. He’s also a lifelong gamer, cutting his teeth on World of Warcraft before honing in on the competitive multiplayer experiences he prefers.
“I enjoy playing online games, competitive stuff, because there’s more pressure and entertainment in it for me. I enjoy that a lot,” Fritz tells Polygon. He’s ranked Emerald 3 in League of Legends, and the sweaty survival game Rust is one of his favorites.
“I like games that require a time commitment. It kind of makes me feel that rush of ‘I could lose everything I’ve just spent a lot of time working for,’” says Fritz.
For all his competitiveness, he’s remarkably chill in our Mario Tennis Fever match-up. Or maybe I’m just not activating his cutthroat instincts. In our first game, he plays as Bowser while I choose Boo, my longtime main. We switch it up after he reveals that Boo is his longtime main.
“I won a tournament one time with him,” Fritz says casually, a red flag I only notice when I read through the transcript of our interview. Why Boo? “We played a Mario Tennis influencer tournament, and I looked up online what was the most broken character to play. I played online a little bit, and I was like,