Aurélie Sacchelli, Media365, published on Wednesday January 1, 2025 at 12:42 p.m.
Arthur Fils and Alexandre Müller both qualified for the quarter-finals of the ATP 250 tournament in Hong Kong, where they will face each other on Friday.
The year 2025 is off to a good start for French men’s tennis, since there will be a tricolor in the final four of the ATP 250 in Hong Kong. Arthur Fils and Alexandre Müller will indeed face each other in the quarterfinals on Friday, after their respective qualification on January 1st. Exempted from the first round as seeded n°4, the world n°20 was opposed in the eighth to the 71st, Zizou Bergs. And he disposed of the Belgian with a score of 7-6, 6-4 in 1h40. Son was the first to break in this match, at 3-2 in the first set, but his opponent immediately recovered. The two men therefore decided in the tie-break, where Fils missed three set points at 6-3, then saved one at 7-6, before finally pocketing the set at 8-7. In the second, the Frenchman had another break in advance (3-2) and was broken (4-4). But this time, he did not wait for the decisive game to make the difference, taking the Belgian’s serve at 4-4, before winning on his first match point. The 20-year-old will therefore see the quarter-finals, facing his compatriot Alexandre Müller, who beat him on the grounds of Rome last May during their only confrontation.
Müller wins a crazy match
A little earlier, the Ile-de-France native had won a very long match against Miomir Kecmanovic, which was interrupted for many minutes due to weather conditions. The Frenchman, 67th in the world, defeated the Serb in 3h27, three sets and after saving two match points: 5-7, 7-6, 7-6! In this nine-break match, it was the Serb who won the first set, breaking at 4-4, before being broken, then re-broken at 5-5. In the second, the games flowed quickly on both sides until 5-5, where Kecmanovic made the break, allowing him to serve for the match. He led 15-0 then 30-15, but Müller pulled away to win three points in a row and break the break. The two men therefore had to decide in the deciding game, and after seeing his opponent come back from 0-3 to 5-4, the Frenchman again gave everything to win 8-6 on his second set point. In the third set, Müller saved two balls at 5-3 then broke at 4-4, before obtaining two match points at 5-4 on his serve. But Kecmanovic saved them, and we had to play another tie-break. The Frenchman missed another match point at 6-5, then saved two at 7-6 and 8-7, then missed two at 9-8 and 10-9 before finally concluding at 11- 10. He therefore won, through a tough fight, his ticket to the quarter-finals and found himself virtually 62nd in the world, the best ranking of his career, at 27 years old.
