{"id":539948,"date":"2026-04-19T20:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T20:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/539948\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T20:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T20:32:08","slug":"arthur-fils-too-good-for-andrey-rublev-to-capture-barcelona-open-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/539948\/","title":{"rendered":"Arthur Fils too good for Andrey Rublev to capture Barcelona Open title"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frenchman Arthur Fils overpowered Russia’s higher-ranked Andrey Rublev \u20606-2, 7-6(2) to win the Barcelona Open on Sunday, clinching his first title \u200csince 2024.<\/p>\n

It was the fourth ATP title and third \u200con clay<\/a> for 21-year-old Fils<\/a>, who \u200creturned from a nearly eight-month injury layoff in \u200cFebruary.<\/p>\n

In the first game, he missed the \u200cbaseline with a couple of shots, handing Rublev<\/a> a break. But Fils dug deep to \u200cget even, breaking back in the \u2060fourth game to \u200cmake it 2-2.<\/p>\n

Rublev struggled to keep up as \u200bFils, now more precise with his forehand returns, picked out the edges \u200bof the sideline and sent powerful returns past the frustrated fifth seed to win \u2060the first set \u200bin just 31 minutes.<\/p>\n

Fils won seven games straight before Rublev managed to hold his own serve to make it 1-1 in the \u200csecond set. The 28-year-old fended off seven break points to prevail in a 13-minute battle to stay even at 2-2.<\/p>\n

Fils outwitted Rublev with a backhand drop shot to get a decisive break and go 4-2 up. But when he was 5-3 up serving for the tournament, the world number \u200c30 made three straight errors to hand \u200bRublev a break.<\/p>\n

Rublev then saved three match \u200cpoints to hold his serve and make it 5-5, and broke Fils to go 6-5 up. But Fils broke back in the very next game to \u2060force a tiebreak, \u2060which he won \u200c7-2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Frenchman Arthur Fils overpowered Russia’s higher-ranked Andrey Rublev \u20606-2, 7-6(2) to win the Barcelona Open on Sunday, clinching…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-539948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}