Nearly two hours after his first match point, Tommy Paul overcame longtime friend Taylor Fritz in one of the most dramatic matches of the 2023 season Friday night in Acapulco. Paul's 6-3, 6-7(2), 7-6(2) victory had a bit of everything, the three-hour, 25-minute odyssey setting the record for longest match in the 30-year history of the Abierto Mexicano Telcel presentado por HSBC.
"I couldn't be happier," Paul said after clinching the semi-final victory on his fourth match point. "Obviously looking forward to making the body feel a little better tomorrow. The goal for this year was to get the ranking up and get more trophies. I only have one trophy on Tour between singles and doubles.
"You don't get trophies unless your in the final, and hopefully I can play another good match tomorrow and get the winner's trophy."
After letting a match point slip on serve at 5-4 in the second set, missing a deep overhead off the bounce, Paul needed a comeback of his own, trailing 0-2 and 1-3 in the third. In a battle of attrition, both men saved break points in their final service games — Fritz erasing two match points at 5-6 — before Paul closed it out after taking a 5/0 lead in the final tie-break.
"You have to [dig deep]. It's never going to be easy against Fritz, he's unreal," Paul added. "He doesn't give you any points throughout the whole match, you feel like you have to work for everything.
"Obviously he got up a break in the third there and it was weird, I started feeling my body a little bit and doing some weird serves, and I don't know if he loved it. And then I think something happened with his stomach too. I think I got a little lucky there that we were both struggling, not just me."
Just over one month since his breakout run to the Australian Open semi-finals, the seventh-seeded Paul advanced the biggest final of his blossoming career, his first at the ATP 500 level. The 25-year-old won his lone previous title match in 2021 at the Stockholm ATP 250.
Third seed Fritz saw his seven-match win streak come to a close, a run that dated back to his Delray Beach title run.
More to follow...
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from Tennis - ATP World Tour https://ift.tt/5GfFtAi
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