Let me set the scene. On one side we have Taylor Fritz. Olympic bronze medalist. U.S. Open Finalist. A 6’5” tennis phenom who’s currently the number 8 ranked men’s tennis player in the world. On the other side we have, well, me. A congenial guy who gives off loads of dad energy and is above average at most video games.
It was not an even match.
Throughout my playing four games of Mario Tennis Fever with one of the best tennis players on the planet, I was thoroughly and utterly humiliated. But I had a blast.
In the first two games, Fritz laid it on pretty thick, befuddling me with his use of power serves and Boo slices. To be fair, he did give me a heads-up.
“I’ll warn you, the reason why I play Boo is because he’s got some nasty spin,” Fritz said right before the match began. Boy, he was not joking.
In the third game, Fritz abandoned Boo (maybe out of pity, who knows) and I found the character that clicked best for me in Luma. I went up 5-0 on Fritz’s Bowser (Tornado racket and all) before he came storming back and tied it 5-5. Thanks to some tricky maneuvering and a well timed body shot (after which I may or may not have yelled “FINISH HIM!”) I was able to save some pride and take one game off of him.
I foolishly decided to switch to Baby Bowser for the next game, in which Fritz promptly destroyed me 7-0. Who would have thought that real-world tennis skills could convert so thoroughly to Switch 2-based competitions?
After our match, I sat down with Fritz to talk about his love of Mario games dating back to the Nintendo 64 and whether or not his skill on the court gave him a leg up when competing on the Switch.
“Maybe a little bit,” Fritz says. “A lot of the game is moving to the ball once you see it and understanding like I do with the boost slices, it catches people off guard because they just want to follow the ball. It’s like (real) tennis like that. I’ll see it and I’ll know where to actually move to, to hit it. And you work at a position, you come to the net. There’s definitely some tennis nuances there.”
Still smarting at my epic defeat, I asked Fritz, who says his go-to characters are Boo and Bowser and that his favorite Fever Racket is Bullet Bill, if he gets a lot of challenges from friends and family who want to be able to claim that they beat Taylor Fritz at ANY type of tennis. He assured me that I wasn’t the first person who tried and failed to get the best of him.
“No one can really beat me in this one either,” Fritz says. “I gravitate more towards (video games) that feel competitive and fun. There’s other tennis titles, obviously, but as far as tennis games go for me, it’s always been the most enjoyable playing Mario Tennis.”
In fact, the very first video game Fritz remembers playing was the Nintendo 64 version of Mario Tennis.
“I remember just being in the family room and we would have four controllers and we would play doubles, two-versus-two, and it was a lot of fun,” Fritz says. “There’s lots of different tennis titles, but for me, Mario Tennis has always been my favorite one by far. I (also) love just classic Nintendo Wii Sports. (Also) Super Mario Galaxy. It’s a bit of a nostalgia thing.”
With Mario Tennis Fever, you can use GameChat to play the game with friends. And although Fritz might struggle to find worthy competitors among his inner circle, he says the game’s online options give him some opportunities for challenging matches.
“There are good competitive settings,” Fritz says. “You can go in and just play an online draw tournament, how a professional tennis bracket would be. I think that’s a cool thing you can do.”
So the next time you log on to your Nintendo Switch 2 and fire up Mario Tennis Fever, you might face off against a normal run-of-the-mill gamer. Or, you just may find yourself in the situation that I was in: trying to hold your ground against one of the best tennis players in the world. My advice: hold onto your butt and learn how to parry Boo’s topspin.
Read our Mario Tennis Fever review, in which we said the game “is the most fun when you’re playing with a few friends.”
Michael Peyton is the Senior Editorial Director of Events & Entertainment at IGN, leading entertainment content and coverage of tentpole events including IGN Live, San Diego Comic Con, gamescom, and IGN Fan Fest. He’s spent 20 years working in the games and entertainment industry, and his adventures have taken him everywhere from the Oscars to Japan to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Follow him on Bluesky @MichaelPeyton
