Up-and-coming Frenchman Arthur Fils beat Russian Andrey Rublev 6-2, 7-6 (7\/2) to lift the Barcelona clay-court title on Sunday with Roland Garros just a month away.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old Fils returned from an eight-month injury absence in February and has been in strong form, finishing as runner-up to Carlos Alcaraz in Doha, before breezing to a fourth trophy of his career on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“These eight months have been hard,” he said. “And now here I am winning a tournament again.”<\/p>\n
The result will make him France’s top-ranked male player after showing poise and maturity to negotiate his way to this ATP 500 title, including fighting from a set down to beat Spanish hope Rafael Jodar in the semi-final.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, he went 2-0 down in the first set before finding his serve and a flurry of winning shots to win the first set 6-2, unnerving the 28-year-old Rublev.<\/p>\n
In the second set, he blew four tournament points, sending the set to a tie-break, where he regained his nerve and had Rublev running around for a comfortable 7-2 close out.<\/p>\n
“It was all in my head at the end. I played very well for a set and a half, but the pressure of the title caught up with me,” he said of the match points that slipped away.<\/p>\n
“At the end, I told myself I just had to put the ball in, and it paid off.”<\/p>\n
Yannick Noah was the last Frenchman to win Roland Garros in 1983, and Fils will be in the spotlight with the 2026 tournament starting on May 18.<\/p>\n
French open champion Alcaraz pulled out of the Barcelona tournament with a wrist problem midweek.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Up-and-coming Frenchman Arthur Fils beat Russian Andrey Rublev 6-2, 7-6 (7\/2) to lift the Barcelona clay-court title on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3550,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-7746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-barcelona","8":"tag-afp","9":"tag-barcelona"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}