Taylor Fritz is about to embark on the most important match of his career so far. A four-time Grand Slam quarter-finalist, the American No. 1 is in his first major final ever at the US Open. And while the crowd will be rooting for the home favorite, one can’t help but divert their attention to the player’s box, where they will find Fritz’s team and his family and friends. His girlfriend, Morgan Riddle will likely steal the spotlight once again!

We all know the hard work Riddle has put in to promote tennis. She works as a social media influencer and collaborates with brands to bring more viewers to tennis, especially the younger generation. But where did the ‘most famous woman in men’s tennis’ grow up? Where did she go to school?

Morgan Riddle was reportedly born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she grew up as the eldest of four siblings. “I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I’m from the Midwest originally,” she told Josefina Gurevich and Shravya Pant, the hosts of the Hold On to Your Racket podcast. “My dream was always to go to New York.”

And she achieved it! Coming from a literary family, where her dad Rob Kimm has written books on fishing, Riddle also chose to pursue a similar subject. An English literature graduate from Wagner College in Staten Island, New York City, Riddle shifted gears after graduation. As a student, she had already started posting content on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok about her lifestyle.

Once she graduated in 2019, Morgan Riddle also worked in real estate, then in media; she was a media director of Minnesota-based company ‘Love Your Melon,’ a private for-profit company that designs and markets apparel, hats, headbands, scarves, blankets, and the like. Next, Riddle worked for the non-profit Gamers Outreach Foundation, a company that provides entertainment to hospitalized families through video games.

But fate had something else in store for the girl who wanted to travel the world. “I was one of those girls that was obsessed with the Bali travel videos and stuff,” Morgan Riddle said. “But I grew up from a much more low middle-class background in Minnesota that just wasn’t accessible to me ever. I never really believed that I would be able to see the world in that way.”

Meeting Taylor Fritz on the dating app Raya must have felt like fate then. Riddle had just moved to Los Angeles as COVID was going on, and she didn’t know anyone in the city. In an effort to meet new people, she got on the A-listers’ app and the rest was history. But it was still a strange shift to tennis for the influencer, whose family actually followed a different sport.

From hockey to tennis, Morgan Riddle turned passion for arts into passion for sports

In the same podcast interview with Hold On to Your Racket, Morgan Riddle revealed, “I grew up with hockey, my whole family is a hockey family … not a soul from Minnesota plays tennis,” Riddle joked. “I personally was more into theater and speech and debate, not athletic at all.”

Before Fritz, Riddle did not know much about the racquet sport, but once she got into it, there was nothing better. And so she set out on a journey to popularize the sport. One of her TikTok videos talking about making “tennis cool again” went viral and it drew support from her boyfriend as well.

“I think what she did was awesome for our sport. It got a ton of people looking at it. I think you get your typical older fan who may be upset about it. I don’t understand how anyone can get upset about it. I’m the one that’s a professional tennis player, I’m the one that does this for a living. I 100 percent agree with everything in that video,” Fritz said at a press conference.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a hard journey, as Riddle told the New York Times, “I genuinely did not have any friends who were interested in tennis, I had no friends who watched tennis, I had no friends who played or wore cute tennis clothing.”

While Morgan Riddle herself does not play much of the sport, she’s as recognizable in the world of professional tennis, as her boyfriend. Today, fans will be waiting with bated breaths for yet another Morgan Riddle outfit to bowl them over, especially given that it’s the US Open final!