After playing 14 sets to get to the fourth round, Taylor Fritz could have been forgiven for celebrating the fact that he was only kept on court for 41 minutes by Jordan Thompson.

The Australian had come into The Championships with a back injury and it had been getting progressively worse as the first three rounds went by. By the time he faced Fritz, he was stiff at the start of the match and barely able to move by the time he retired at 6-1, 3-0 down.

Fritz was heartbroken for his opponent. He had been looking forward to playing the likeable Australian. Now he was through to his third Wimbledon quarter-final and had not had time to break a sweat.

“It’s obviously not the way I want to go through,” he said. “I was excited to play Jordan today. I was excited to play some good tennis. Yeah, it’s just sad.

"He’s been battling; he’s been playing five-setters. He was out playing a long doubles match yesterday so he’s been battling out here. Respect to him for coming out here, his body is obviously not right. So I feel bad for him.”

As for what Fritz did now, that was up for debate.

“I feel like my coaches are going to tell me to just chill,” he said, “but I’m going to want to go hit a little bit. It’s a discussion for later.”

Thompson represents everything the rest of the world has come to admire about athletes from Australia.

He gives everything he has and more on court; he works as hard as anyone in the locker room and he does it without complaint. He is not one to attribute a loss to an injury or bemoan his lot, he simply gets on with it.

If he walks on court, no matter what the injury, he is there to compete, never to fold. The pain, then, must have been unbearable for him to throw in the towel in such an important match.

His cause was not helped by his refusal to let a friend down. He is honouring the agreement he made with Pierre-Hugues Herbert to play doubles here.

His back may be hurting and the rest of his body may be held together with physio’s tape and hope, but he promised Herbert he would play, so play he has, and they are in the third round. But whether Thompson will be physically able to continue in the doubles remains to be seen.

By contrast to his opponent, Fritz has been feeling better and stronger with every round he has played no matter how long each round has gone.

Very little has changed in Fritz’s game in the 11 years that he has been on tour – he has merely got better at doing it. He says that his mood is entirely governed by his results and those have been impressive on the grass (he won the silverware in Stuttgart and Eastbourne as he made his way here).

Supremely confident at the moment, he tops the leaderboard in aces (79 and counting) and is only growing in belief with every passing day.

His task was simple: keep doing what he has been doing for the past week and focus on his own side of the court. Whatever Thompson’s problems were, Fritz could not afford to think about them. Blinkers on, serving arm warmed up, do not deviate from the plotted path. He didn’t and he is through to play Karen Khachanov on Tuesday.

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