Gael Monfils is back to play good tennis at the 2023 Canadian Open as he added another win, beating Stefanos Tsitsipas in two sets.
After battling injuries for much of this year, Monfils is back to creating highlights on a tennis court as he showed out against one of the best players in the world - Stefanos Tsitsipas. Tsitsipas arrived in Toronto in high spirits following his triumph in Los Cabos, but the Greek didn't play a very good match.
He was decent, but simply didn't play well enough to win the match and there is a few reasons for that. Mostly it came down to Monfils doing exactly what he needed to do to win the match - attack. Attacking isn't quite the style of Monfils, generally at least, but we've seen him do it more and more often as he's gotten older.
The athleticism is still out of this world but he's not as quick as he once was and he doesn't have the stamina to chase every ball as he usually did so it was time for a change. The change allowed him to win a match like this because Tsitsipas was overwhelmed more than once.
Tsitsipas played fairly well in the opening set but really didn't play the crucial rallies as well as he needed to. He wasted two break points while failing to defend the one he faced and that was enough for La Monf to take the opening set 6-4.
Monfils carried the good momentum into the second set breaking Tsitsipas early which was crucial. From there the French veteran managed to hold his serve with a combination of timely good serves and aggressive play.
He missed more than he did in the opening set but opting to take that risk proved beneficial in the end. The final score was 6-4 6-3 for Monfils who moves on to face either Sebastian Korda or Aleksandar Vukic in the next round.
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