Vacherot Upsets Fils in Tokyo

Valentin Vacherot of Monaco beat France’s Arthur Fils 7⁠–⁠5, 4⁠–⁠6, 6⁠–⁠4 on Sunday, 4 October, in the quarter-finals of the Japan Open in Tokyo. The match took about two hours and 20 minutes. It puts Vacherot in the semi-finals of the ATP event (AFP; ATP Tour).

The Japan Open, the Kinoshita Group Japan Open this week, is an ATP 500, a men’s tournament one level below the Masters series. A quarter-final is the round of eight. Fils is the world No. 9, with 3,150 points, a career high reached this week. He is 22. Vacherot is the world No. 18, with 2,250 points. He is 27, and he is the eighth seed. Those two ranking numbers belong to different players (live-tennis.eu; ATP Tour).

A seed is a player the tournament places in the draw so the highest-ranked men cannot meet in the early rounds. Fils was not one of them. He missed the entry deadline and had to come through qualifying, the preliminary bracket, even though he is now ninth in the world. He beat Luca Van Assche and Frances Tiafoe to reach Sunday’s match. He is also the man who won this title in 2024 (ATP Tour).

He looked in control early. At 5⁠–⁠3 in the first set he had two set points, two chances to close the set on the next point. He lost both, then lost four games in a row. Vacherot took the set 7⁠–⁠5, finishing it with a down-the-line return (AFP). Fils hit back. He took the second set 6⁠–⁠4, pumped his fist and pulled the crowd in, and forced a third set (AFP). Vacherot was a break down in that set as well — the opponent had taken his service game — and again won four games in a row (ATP Tour). With Fils serving to stay in the match at 4⁠–⁠5, Vacherot hit two return winners in a row, then won two long rallies to break and finish it 6⁠–⁠4 (ATP Tour).

“I believed and turned it around in the first set,” Vacherot said. “Then, in the third, I was a bit more positive that I could break him back because I was at 30/30 in a lot of his service games. Maybe he should have won one of the first or third sets, but I won both of them. That’s tennis. That’s the beauty” (ATP Tour). He is now 5⁠–⁠5 against players ranked in the top 10. This is his third tour semi-final. In the previous round he had already come from a set and a break down against Stefanos Tsitsipas (ATP Tour).

Official ranks, the list published for this week, have Fils at No. 9 and Vacherot at No. 18. A separate live list adds points from this week before the next official update. On that live list Vacherot is up to No. 14. The official rank is 18. The big server ranked 18th is Vacherot, the man who won, not Fils (AFP; live-tennis.eu; ATP Tour).

Vacherot has been here before in a different form. At last year’s Asian hard-court swing he arrived at the Shanghai Masters ranked No. 204, won the qualifying tournament, and left as champion. That made him the lowest-ranked man to win an ATP Masters 1000, the tour’s top regular-season tier, since that series took its present shape in 1990. He will drop 1,000 points before he tries to defend that title next week. A first week inside the top 10 is what he is chasing (ATP Tour).

For Fils the loss is a step back on the road to the Nitto ATP Finals, the season-ending event for the top eight. He is seventh on the live race, the running points list that decides who qualifies. Daniil Medvedev, eighth on that list, and Alex de Minaur, ninth, are still alive at the China Open in Beijing and can still put him under pressure (ATP Tour).

His semi-final opponent is not named as a winner here. He plays whoever comes through between Jiří Lehečka and Adolfo Daniel Vallejo (AFP; ATP Tour). He is one of only two seeded players left in Tokyo. If he and top seed Carlos Alcaraz both keep winning, a final between them is possible. That is not a result (ATP Tour).

What is finished is the quarter-final. The world No. 9, who had to qualify, had two chances to take the first set from the world No. 18. The No. 18 won the match.