By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Saturday March 4, 2023
Tommy Paul edged Taylor Fritz in a three hour and 25-minute epic to reach the final in Acapulco.
Photo Source: Getty
Tommy Paul and Taylor Fritz have quite a history together, dating back to their days of playing junior finals and meeting on the challenger circuit. But they’ve definitely never experienced anything like their semifinal on Friday night at Acapulco.
The pair battled across three hours and 25 minutes and set the record for the longest match in tournament history as Paul edged his compatriot in dramatic fashion, 6-3, 6-7(2), 7-6(2).
It could have been a relatively simple victory for Paul, who held a match point while serving at 5-4 40-30 in the second set but botched an overhead to give Fritz new life.
Fritz would run with his opportunity, eventually securing the second set in a tiebreak, and as Paul began cramping in the muggy Mexican humidity in the third set, it looked like Fritz might be headed to an easy triumph.
Not quite.
Fritz would give back the break and start to struggle physically as well. In the end it was hard to tell who was suffering more as the match wore on, but Fritz took the cake when he stopped play and headed to a trash can behind his chair to vomit. The third seed would wobble the rest of the way as Paul, buoyed by the sight of seeing another suffering soul across the net from him, kept his legs beneath him to gut out the win.
Paul converted his fourth match point one hour and 50 minutes after flailing on his first. It was a redemption story wrapped within a tennis match for the 25-year-old.
Paul reaches his second ATP final and his first at the ATP 500 level, and will face Alex de Minaur for the title on Saturday in Acapulco.
De Minaur, known for his physical prowess, was the only one of the semifinalists that did not wilt in the heat on Friday night. He rallied from a set down against 19-year-old Holger Rune (3-6, 7-5, 6-2) as the Dane started cramping late in the second set and never recovered.
For a set and a half it was a brilliant performance from Rune, who put his breathtaking power on display as he asserted himself in all areas of the court against De Minaur. The 10th-ranked Dane plays a bold brand of tennis, peppered with an uncanny touch around the net, but he couldn’t execute his gameplan as his legs cramped badly in the final set.
He was quickly down 3-0 before he could get to his chair to see the trainer and gulp down pickle juice. He recovered some, and managed to hit some remarkable winners and lock down a pair of games, but De Minaur was too tough for him this evening, the Australian earning his tenth career Top-10 win to book a spot in his 11th ATP final.
De Minaur holds a 3-0 edge over Paul in their lifetime head to head.