MONTPELLIER \u2014 Canadian tennis star Felix Auger-Aliassime defended his Open Occitanie title with a 6-3, 7-6 (4) win over France\u2019s Adrian Mannarino in Sunday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n
Auger-Aliassime scored five straight points to take the third set tiebreak, including his 13th ace of the match to go up 5-4 before winning the next two points on return.<\/p>\n
The six-foot-four Canadian\u2019s serve was in top form, as he won 87 per cent of first-serve points.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdrian is always a really tough opponent to play,\u201d Auger-Aliassime said. \u201cFor all players, there\u2019s a lot of respect for him and his career. I knew it was going to be a tough match today, and I\u2019m very happy to win here again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing to win here again, I\u2019m thrilled with my whole week and especially today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Auger-Aliassime became just the second man to successfully defend his title in Montpellier, joining Richard Gasquet.<\/p>\n
It was the ninth tour-level singles title of the 25-year-old from Montreal, making him the Canadian with the most men\u2019s singles titles in the Open Era, passing recently retired Milos Raonic.<\/p>\n
He entered the tournament as the top seed and ranked eighth in the world.<\/p>\n
He also extended his lead as the player with the most indoor wins on the ATP Tour this decade to 89. World No. 2 Jannik Sinner is second with 83.<\/p>\n
Auger-Aliassime improved to 2-1 against Mannarino, who entered the tournament as a wild card.<\/p>\n
Mannarino reached a career-high ranking of No. 17 early in 2024 before a slump in form saw him drop out of the top 100. He was ranked 70th heading into this tournament.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTPELLIER \u2014 Canadian tennis star Felix Auger-Aliassime defended his Open Occitanie title with a 6-3, 7-6 (4) win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-462342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}