Frances Tiafoe beat fellow American Taylor Fritz 6-4 6-4 to win the \u2060Halle Open on Sunday, sealing the biggest title of his career and becoming the first American since 1993 to lift the ATP \u2060500 grass-court trophy.<\/p>\n
Tiafoe \u2060set the \u200btone early, breaking serve in the opening set and remaining composed on his own delivery to keep Fritz from settling. He carried \u2060that momentum into the second set, again striking early and dictating from the baseline to wrap up the win and snap a seven-match losing streak \u2060against Fritz since his first victory in 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t even know what clip I was \u200bserving in the first set, but I \u200cfelt like I couldn\u2019t \u200cmiss one,\u201d Tiafoe said. \u201cI returned really well. I had no troubles on my serve the \u200cwhole match, and it just feels good to get this done. \u201cHe\u2019s a hell of a player and a hell of a competitor too. I knew he was going to make it hard out there at the end and I played some great tennis. Luck was on my way a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old dropped just seven points \u200con serve in the final to cap a memorable debut appearance at the German grass event, as well as claiming his fourth career title and \u200bfirst in three years.<\/p>\n
He also registered three top-10 wins during the week, including victories over world No 10 Flavio Cobolli and No 4 Felix Auger-Aliassime. Before Sunday, Tiafoe had gone 0-4 in finals above ATP 250 level, including a defeat to Fritz in Tokyo in 2022, and \u2060had suffered a 5hr 26min fourth-round loss<\/a> to Matteo Arnaldi at the \u200bFrench Open earlier this \u200bmonth.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is big. I just want \u200bto say one of my favorite scriptures: \u2018The pain that you\u2019re feeling does \u200bnot compare to \u200cthe joy that is \u200bcoming.\u2019 Obviously, that \u200bhas been proven very true,\u201d Tiafoe said. \u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019ve been living by.\u201d<\/p>\n The Halle triumph will see Tiafoe climb nine places to No 19 in the ATP rankings on Monday, boosting his prospects ahead of Wimbledon, which begins 29 June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Frances Tiafoe beat fellow American Taylor Fritz 6-4 6-4 to win the \u2060Halle Open on Sunday, sealing the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":718268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-718267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}