Stefanos Tsitsipas, 5th in the world, won the Monte-Carlo Masters 1000 on Sunday for the second consecutive year when he defeated Spanish Alejandro Davidovich Fokina (46th) 6-3, 7-6 (7/3) in the final.
Thus, the Greek became the sixth player at the age of 23 to retain his title in the first major clay-court tournament of the season, along with Ilie Nastase (1971-1973), Björn Borg (1979-1980), Thomas Muster (1995 -1996), Juan Carlos Ferrero (2002-2003) and Rafael Nadal (2005-2012 and 2016-2018).
After a few games where he was slow in running, Tsitsipas found the balance: from 3-3 in the first set, he lined up five consecutive games to complete the first set and go 2-0 away in the second.
Taking advantage of countless unforced errors from Davidovich Fokina, who clearly lost strength after a grueling tournament in which he notably got his biggest victory by beating world No. 1 Novak Djokovic in the second round, Tsitsipas seemed on track to quickly lift the trophy and without trembling.
While the Greek seemed to only need to play with his opponent until he made a mistake, he in turn experienced a few minutes of loss of concentration. Davidovich Fokina, who was supported by the public, took the opportunity to scrap and thus return to 2-2 and on against.
The Greek however made a service break to lead 5-4 and serve for the match. But, defeat to defeat, the Spaniard with the mismatched sock dropped all his shots and tied at 5-5.
The decisive game was led by Tsitsipas and, as a symbol, two men found themselves on the ground while the match point was still rolling on the court: Davidovich Fokina because he had just dived into the tournament, and Tsitsipas because the the ball will bounce out of bounds and it is sacred.
Last year, a few weeks after winning his first Masters 1000 in Monte-Carlo, Tsitsipas led two sets to zero against Novak Djokovic in the Roland-Garros final before losing.
Even if he loses his first Masters 1000 final, Davidovich Fokina will still make a significant step in the world rankings that will be published on Monday morning. Thus he would go from 46th to 27th, his best ranking ever.
Note that 21 of the last 30 finals played in Monaco include players from Spain. Nadal leads the class with 13 appearances and 12 wins.
Source: Radio-Canada