Arthur Fils spent barely an hour on court in Montreal, and he never once looked like surrendering his serve. The 18th seed dismantled Mariano Navone 6-3, 6-2 on Friday, not facing a single break point and winning 91 percent of the points behind his first delivery.
Numbers like that tell the story of a player in total control. Navone, a grinder who thrives on dragging opponents into long exchanges, was never allowed to settle. Fils took the ball early, flattened his groundstrokes and closed points before the Argentine could build any rhythm.
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A draw blown wide open
The Frenchman advances into a National Bank Open that has shed almost all of its heavyweights. Third seed Alex de Minaur went out to Cameron Norrie in a near three-hour comeback. Eleventh seed Lorenzo Musetti fell to teenager Rafael Jodar. Fifteenth seed Frances Tiafoe retired hurt against Arthur Rinderknech.
By the end of the round only two top-10 seeds were still standing. For a player of Fils’s ceiling, that reads as an opening rather than a warning. Few left in the draw can match his raw power on a quick hard court, and the section ahead of him has thinned out sharply.
The stakes for Fils
A maiden Masters 1000 title has long felt like a question of when rather than if for the 21-year-old. Montreal, with its scattered seeds and its run of upsets, hands him a real chance to turn that potential into silverware.
He will need to keep serving like this. On Friday’s evidence, the rest of the field has reason to worry.
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