\n See draw<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Arthur Gea won the first ATP Tour title of his career on Saturday, beating defending champion and No. 8 seed Denis Shapovalov of Canada 6-3, 6-4 in the final of the Mifel Tennis Open by Telcel Oppo. The 21-year-old Frenchman, ranked No. 127, will rise to a new career-high No. 81 on the back of the win.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Gea becomes the fourth French ATP Tour champion this season, after Arthur Fils in Barcelona, Quentin Halys in Kitzbuhel and Luca Van Assche in Estoril, and the sixth player born in 2005 or later to win a tour-level title.<\/p>\n
It capped a rapid rise for the Frenchman, who reached a career-high ranking as recently as July, built on a season that had already included his first ATP Tour quarter-final in Montpellier in February and the biggest win of his career at this year\u2019s Australian Open, where he beat No. 19 seed Jiri Lehecka to reach the second round on his Grand Slam main draw debut.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really tense, to be honest \u2013 first final,\u201d Gea said afterwards. \u201cI was really ready to play it. The plan was the same as in the semis, and I did it, and it was perfect.\u201d His serve and forehand were the reasons of his success in Mexico, he admitted.<\/p>\n
Shapovalov happy to be healthy<\/p>\n
For Shapovalov, ranked No. 68 but a former world No. 10, the defeat ended an eight-match winning streak in Los Cabos, where he had won the title last year, and denied him the chance to become the first player in the tournament\u2019s history to win it twice. The 27-year-old had returned to the court only weeks after uncertainty over his fitness, and struck a warm note in defeat.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery happy to be back on court, healthy again,\u201d he said. \u201cA few weeks ago we didn\u2019t know if I would even be at this tournament, so to be back playing at such a high level, it\u2019s definitely very special.\u201d He also praised his opponent directly: \u201cHuge congrats to Arthur. You\u2019re a tremendous player, man. Such a young career, and already doing so much in the tennis world. Keep playing like this, and you\u2019re going to go very far.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gea reached the final beating Coleman Wong 7-6 (7), 6-3, No. 3 seed Francisco Cerundolo of Argentina 6-7 (11), 6-4, 6-0, American Michael Zheng 0-6, 6-4, 6-0, and South Korea\u2019s Soonwoo Kwon 6-4, 6-7 (8), 6-2 across the week. Shapovalov defeated No. 5 seed Cameron Norrie of England 6-3, 5-7, 6-4, Czech Dalibor Svrcina 6-4, 6-2, Mexico\u2019s Rodrigo Pacheco Mendez 6-3, 6-2 and Australia\u2019s Rinky Hijikata 2-6, 6-3, 6-2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mifel Tennis Open by Telcel Oppo \u2022Final \u2022 Completed See draw Arthur Gea won the first ATP Tour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":841982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-841981","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\/841981","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=841981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}