Fils flips the set to beat Tiafoe and win the Cincinnati title

Six. Arthur Fils won the third set of the Cincinnati Open final 6-0, the exact reverse of the 1-6 second set Frances Tiafoe had just taken off him. Fils closed out the match 6-3 1-6 6-0 for his first Cincinnati title.

Fils broke in the second game of the first set and served it out 6-3. Tiafoe reversed the whole thing in the second: a break in the second game put him down 0-2, and a break in the sixth game made it 1-5 before Tiafoe served out a 6-1 set. The third set flipped back the other way entirely: Fils broke to open it, broke again for a 4-0 lead, and broke a third time to close it out 6-0. Fils finished the match having won 69 percent of points on serve to Tiafoe's 59, and hit 23 winners to Tiafoe's 9.

The finish was not as clean as the scoreline suggests. Tiafoe saved two match points before Fils finally converted, breaking to finish the match rather than serving it out himself; in the third set alone, Fils held match point on seven separate occasions before one of them stuck. Tiafoe's break point numbers tell a similar story of chances not quite taken: he converted 2 of 6 (33 percent) against Fils' 4 of 8 (50 percent), and won just 31 percent of return points to Fils' 41.

The title is Fils' fifth on tour, and it came through a tougher draw than the final's scoreline suggests. Earlier in the tournament he beat Alex De Minaur, ranked 8 and the 5 seed, 6-3 6-4, and before that he needed a 9-7 second-set tiebreak to get past Jiri Lehecka, the 9 seed, winning 6-1 6-7(7) 6-3. He and Tiafoe had met once before, at the Miami Masters in 2025, where Fils also won in three sets, 7-6(11) 5-7 6-2; Cincinnati makes it 2-0 in the head to head. Fils is 22, carries a season record of 30-10, and already has a title this year in Barcelona.

Match tale, 23 August 2026, sources: Cincinnati Open, api-tennis