Carlos Alcaraz thrashed Arthur Fils inside 50 minutes to maintain his unbeaten start to 2026 and win the Qatar Open in Doha.<\/p>\n
Spanish top seed Alcaraz was ruthless from start to finish, converting five out of seven break points, as he blew France’s Fils away in a 6-2 6-1 victory.<\/p>\n
The win – the shortest of Alcaraz’s career in completed matches – was his 12th of the season as he followed up last month’s Australian Open triumph with his 26th career title. <\/p>\n
“I came this year hungry for more,” said Alcaraz, 22, who lost in the quarter-final of the Qatar Open last year. <\/p>\n
“It’s been a really strong start to the year. It wasn’t easy, I had to be strong mentally with my team. I’m just playing great tennis and I’m really happy about this week. This trophy means a lot to me.”<\/p>\n
Victory against unseeded Fils comes just 20 days after Alcaraz became the youngest man in history to complete the Career Grand Slam in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
The seven-time Grand Slam-winner set the tone from the start as he broke Fils’ serve in the first game before speeding through the first set in only 28 minutes.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz’s dominance continued into the second set and a double break to go 3-0 up prompted Fils’ frustrations to boil over as the Frenchman smashed his racquet.<\/p>\n
Fils got on the board in his next service game, inducing cheers from the crowd, but it proved to be a consolation as Alcaraz’s dominance in the rallies saw him go on to secure the second set in only 24 minutes.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz fired 18 winners during the course of the match, compared to Fils’ three, and didn’t concede a single break point.<\/p>\n
The victory in 50 minutes eclipses last year’s shortest final, when Norway’s Casper Ruud beat Ugo Humbert, of France, 6-2 6-3 in 68 minutes at the Nordic Open in Stockholm.<\/p>\n
World number 40 Fils, who missed around eight months last year with a back injury, saw the funny side as he paid tribute to Alcaraz.<\/p>\n
“You played very good, you’re a hell of a champion, it’s a joke,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Congrats to your team and to you, you did an unbelievable job.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz thrashed Arthur Fils inside 50 minutes to maintain his unbeaten start to 2026 and win the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-495520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}