{"id":943747,"date":"2026-10-23T22:08:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T22:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/943747\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T22:08:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T22:08:17","slug":"fils-edges-michelson-to-reach-brussels-semis-tennis-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/943747\/","title":{"rendered":"Fils Edges Michelson to Reach Brussels Semis \u2013 Tennis Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Match Report<\/p>\n

Arthur Fils finally got his tournament underway in Brussels, and reached his 16th career quarterfinal. <\/p>\n

Chris OddoOctober 23, 20262 minute read<\/p>\n

A bye put Arthur Fils into the second round in his first event as the No. 1 seed. A walkover got him to the quarterfinals. Finally, on Friday he got his tournament underway and \u2013 thanks to an incredible effort from Alex Michelsen late in the second set \u2013 was forced to work.<\/p>\n

\"tennis<\/a><\/p>\n

The work finally went Fils\u2019 way after the Frenchman missed on his first five match points during the second-set tiebreak. Finally, he got over the line, claiming the 26-point breaker to take his place in the semifinals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, you know, everyone was telling me, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s so nice, you\u2019re starting in the quarterfinal already,\u2019 you know?\u201d Fils said on court. \u201cAnd actually, it\u2019s the worst thing that can happen. I played Alex, an unbelievable player. He has his rhythm, you know, too much. I\u2019m coming for the first time, I play on this court, so, yeah, it was not easy. Very happy with the way I handled it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leading by a set and a break late in the second, Fils looked on his way to an uncomplicated victory in his first meeting with his fellow 22-year-old.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor sure, at 6-4, 5-3, I saw myself in the locker room taking a shower, easy,\u201d Fils told the crowd after the 6-4, 7-6(12) win over 37th-ranked Michelsen. \u201cThen, I don\u2019t know, he battled very hard, and he was playing way better tennis than mine, actually. So I had to vary the battle, and I\u2019m very happy to finish in two sets.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 22-year-old Fils improved to 36-13 on the season. He will face either Jan-Lennard Struff or Zizou Bergs in one of Saturday\u2019s semifinals.<\/p>\n

He saved three of four break points overall and won 79 percent of his first-serve points.<\/p>\n

The No. 10-ranked Frenchman hit 18 forehand winners to seven for Michelsen and won the majority of points that lasted nine strokes or fewer (76 to 60).<\/p>\n

Third-seeded Francisco Cerundolo will face Tallon Griekspoor in the lower-half semifinal in Brussels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Match Report Arthur Fils finally got his tournament underway in Brussels, and reached his 16th career quarterfinal. Chris…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":943748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-943747","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\/943747","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=943747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/943748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}