Here we go again!

Can Tiafoe do better than last time in the Cincinnati final?

Well, it wasn't so long ago that final. It was really a strange match, wasn't it... just looking at the scoreline: 6-3, 1-6, 6-0 in favor of Fils. On a fast hard court with two good servers! Early on, it looked like Fils would just wrap it up quickly, but then it completely changed in the second set, before Tiafoe was physically done/injured and lost the third set easily. Arthur is starting to show some real patterns... he dominates a lot of the matches (almost Sinner-like) that he is supposed to win; he doesn't let his intensity drop. He does this so well, except for when he plays Grand Slams... It's like he struggles to maintain it when he has to play longer best-of-five matches. Anyway, we are in a regular best-of-three sets now, in a tournament where Fils was outstanding last year. Not like he had an easy way to the title back then... Fritz, Berrettini, Shelton, Rune, and then Humbert - he battled like crazy. Funnily enough, we saw him come through the qualifiers this time, due to a late sign-up. Fils admitted he was a bit tense because he had everything to lose in those rounds... but it looked a lot better against LVA in the first round. I don't need to go into detail about that match; it was a typical match that he absolutely dominated from start to finish, with excellent metrics in just about every area.

As for Tiafoe, he seems really determined to finish this year as strong as possible, going for the ATP Finals. He decided to skip Davis Cup & Laver Cup, which seems to have been an excellent choice if you have a look at what happened to the ones that did participate. He got the honor of playing Nishikori in the first round... a match that he played well enough, without needing to be outstanding and perhaps go "all-in". I don't want to draw too many conclusions from that match, since it was under special circumstances. He played a lot in Cincinnati and the US Open, and now he really needs to lock in and do a difficult part of the season well. I do expect we get to see a pretty decent Tiafoe, but it's a very tough second round against Fils, who has shown us several times just how good he plays here. It's not really an easy matchup for Tiafoe either; I prefer him a lot more when he has time to dictate, instead of playing very fast and intense tennis...