The Asian tour begins with tennis, and from the first match, Arthur Fils makes it clear to us that we should not expect anything from it.
With Arthur Fils, we can experience the very high as well as the very low. The Frenchman is capable of winning the ATP 500 tournament in Hamburg by beating Alex Zverev at home in the final, and losing a match that only he knows the secret to in the Davis Cup against Roberto Bautista Agut, while he was leading 6-2, 5-3. It was therefore impossible to know which Arthur we were going to have today in the first round of the ATP 500 in Tokyo. But from the first stroke of the racket, we knew.
Arthur Fils was having an off day
Lined up for the ATP 500 in Tokyo, Arthur Fils faced the tournament’s number 1 seed and recent US Open finalist, Taylor Fritz, in the first round. And against the world number 7, the Frenchman delivered a highly detestable match. After shamefully stealing the first set from the American, after a long 45-minute fight, Arthur came back to himself in the second set, which he lost calmly (6-3).
But in these best-of-two-set matches, the third set is often decisive, and does not allow for a recovery. While we thought that the Frenchman had learned from his mistakes in the first set, here he is winning 6-4, 3-6, 6-3. We miss the evils in the face of such recklessness.
With this fifth victory over a member of the top 10 (in 11 matches!), Arthur Fils has once again revived our concerns about him. We could have done without him. In the next round, we hope that we can count on the services of Matteo Berrettini to stop the bleeding.
