Fils hits 'best passing I ever hit in my life' to reach Tokyo final

pa href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/arthur-fils/f0f1/overview'Arthur Fils/arsquo; reaction said it all./p

pAfter hitting a final forehand passing shot to close out a 7-6(8), 7-6(10) victory against a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/holger-rune/r0dg/overview'Holger Rune/a in the a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/tokyo/329/overview'Kinoshita Group Japan Open Tennis Championships/a semi-finals, the Frenchman fell to the court./p

pldquo;Itrsquo;s the best passing I ever hit in my whole life, man. The passing went crazy. I was going exactly for this one and it went so good out of my racquet. It was an amazing one,rdquo; Fils said in his on-court interview. ldquo;When I went to the passing, I got big cramps in the quads and I said to myself, lsquo;Okay, I need to win this one because otherwise I donrsquo;t know how Irsquo;m going to do itrsquo;. /p

pldquo;I saw the passing and just laid down because I was completely tired [from] the match and all the week.rdquo;/p

blockquote class="twitter-tweet"

p lang="en" dir="ltr"The final 2 in Tokyo! ???? a href="https://twitter.com/japanopentennis?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@japanopentennis/a | a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/kinoshitajotennis?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#kinoshitajotennis/a a href="https://t.co/AGbhrki9Vg"pic.twitter.com/AGbhrki9Vg/a/p

mdash; ATP Tour (@atptour) a href="https://twitter.com/atptour/status/1840749348990190030?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"September 30, 2024/a/blockquote

script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"/script

pFils is into his fourth ATP Tour final and his second at an ATP 500, after lifting the trophy in Hamburg earlier this year. He will face countryman a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/ugo-humbert/hh26/overview'Ugo Humbert/a for the crown in Tokyo./p

p/p

pHumbert leads the pairrsquo;s Lexus ATP Head2Head series 3-0, including a 6-2, 6-2 win just two months ago in Montreal. Even so, Fils is happy to face a friend in the final./p

pldquo;Itrsquo;s amazing. For now Irsquo;ve never beat him, so Irsquo;m going to come on the court as an underdog,rdquo; Fils said. ldquo;We like this position, especially in the final. So letrsquo;s see how it [will] go.rdquo;/p

[ATP APP]

pRune won three more total points than Fils in their semi-final according to Infosys ATP Stats, but the Frenchman found a way through two tight tie-breaks. /p

pThe first-placed player in the PIF ATP Live Race To Jeddah, 20, saved three of the four break points he faced to become the third-youngest finalist in tournament history./p

p[NEWSLETTER FORM]/p