Felix Auger-Aliassime finished off an amazing week at the 2023 Swiss Indoors in Basel by beating Hubert Hurkacz in the final in two sets.
This was a pretty big match for Hurkacz, who is hunting a spot in Turin. The Polish player would have greatly benefited from the 500 points if he had won, but by losing to the Canadian, he's only going to get 300.
That's still good, but he'll need a greater result in Paris to secure a spot in Turin. When it comes to Auger-Aliassime, this win is tremendously important for him. The season has been very bad for him, even recently.
The week in Basel has been spectacular, and there is clearly something special about the city. He's now won back-to-back trophies in Basel. The match itself was pretty close as it finished in two tiebreaks, but Auger-Aliassime was the better player, clearly.
The Canadian didn't allow a single break point in the entire match, which shows how dominant he was. He had five break points on the serve of Hurkacz, but the big-serving Pole saved all of them.
It was a pretty decent effort from Hurkacz, who finished with 12 aces and only six unforced errors. He was neither erratic nor bad from the baseline, but the Canadian simply read his serve really well.
Take the second set tiebreak, for example. He won a couple of points simply by returning the ball extremely well. The serve of Hurkacz is about as good as you can get on the ATP Tour, and that just shows how everything was clicking for Auger-Aliassime.
He himself finished with 13 aces and 43 winners, which is sensational. It's even more sensational when you add that he only had five unforced errors.
This was likely the best event he played all year and this might be the best match he played all year. A well-deserved title defence for the Canadian.
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