STUTTGART, 17 Jun: Frances Tiafoe will contest his first grass-court final after the American player outlasted Marton Fucsovics in a marathon Stuttgart Open tiebreak on Saturday.
\nTiafoe won their semifinal 6-3, 7-6 (11) after saving six set points in the tiebreak. He seized his chance at 11-10 down to win the next three points, sealing victory with a stinging return shot.
\n\u201cCrazy match, crazy second set, I\u2019m just happy to get through,\u201d he said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t relaxed in that tiebreak at all.\u201d
\nTiafoe will play Jan-Lennard Struff in Sunday\u2019s final after the home crowd cheered the German player past Hubert Hurkacz 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.
\nTiafoe has a 2-4 win-loss record in finals. He won his last final in April on Houston clay against Tom\u00e1s Mart\u00edn Etcheverry.
\nHungarian player Fucsovics came through qualifying in Stuttgart and upset Tiafoe\u2019s friend and fellow American player, Taylor Fritz, in the quarterfinals on Friday. He was bidding to reach his first final since 2021 but his return game was notably lacking against Tiafoe as he failed to force a single break point.
\nStruff dropped a set for the first time in the tournament but still made his third career final by upsetting the fourth-seeded Hurkacz, a former Wimbledon semifinalist.
\nStruff is 0-2 in finals and looking for his first career title on Sunday. He said it \u201cmeans a lot\u201d to have his family in the crowd because his first final in Germany in Munich in 2021 was played without a crowd amid the coronavirus pandemic. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
STUTTGART, 17 Jun: Frances Tiafoe will contest his first grass-court final after the American player outlasted Marton Fucsovics in a marathon Stuttgart Open tiebreak on Saturday. Tiafoe won their semifinal 6-3, 7-6 (11) after saving six set points in the tiebreak. He seized his chance at 11-10 down to win the next three points, sealing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-218580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}