In this study, based on the results from the sinusoidal base excitation analyses of a single degree of freedom system with a tuned mass damper (TMD), it is verified that optimal friction force can improve the performance of a TMD like a linear viscous damper which has been usually used in general TMD. The magnitude of the optimal friction increases with increasing mass ratio of the TMD and decreases with increasing structural damping. Particularly, it is observed that the optimized friction force gives better control performance than the optimized viscous damping of the TMD. However, because the performance of the TMD considerably deteriorates when the friction force increases over the optimal value, it is required to keep the friction force from exceeding the optimal value.