On Saturday frances Tiafoe\u00a0additional\u00a0a touch\u00a0a lot of\u00a0sparkle to his already\u00a0sparkly\u00a0season by beating South Korea\u2019s Kwon Soon-woo 6-2 0-6 6-4\u00a0to line\u00a0up\u00a0to\u00a0all-American final against Taylor Fritz at the Japan Open.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0September the\u00a0American reached his\u00a01st\u00a0Grand slam\u00a0semi-final at the U.S. Open, reached his second title-decider of the season despite a poor second set in his\u00a0triumph.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a weird match, but happy to get through,\u201d said the 24-year-old. \u201cIn these kind of matches it\u2019s not always gonna be pretty, it\u2019s not always gonna be your best stuff, but a win is what matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kwon looked nervous\u00a0from time to time\u00a0within the\u00a0opener and struggled to handle Tiafoe\u2019s deft\u00a0mixture of\u00a0accuracy,\u00a0bit\u00a0and power\u00a0because the\u00a0yank\u00a0perturbed\u00a0off\u00a05\u00a0games\u00a0in a very\u00a0row before claiming the set 6-2.<\/p>\n

But the South Korean then\u00a0sweptback\u00a0the second set 6-0. Fourth-seeded Tiafoe upped the ante\u00a0within the\u00a0third, winning\u00a0the 2\u00a0break points he\u00a0required\u00a0to serve for the match at 5-2,\u00a0solely\u00a0to stumble\u00a0yet again.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0American\u00a0sealed the win at the second time of asking with a cross-court forehand. Third-seeded Fritz\u00a0felled\u00a0Canada\u2019s Denis Shapovalov 6-3 6-7(5) 6-3\u00a0within the\u00a0second semi-final.<\/p>\n

His\u00a0triumph\u00a0ensured he\u00a0can\u00a0build\u00a0his\u00a0prime\u00a0ten\u00a0debut in next week\u2019s rankings.\u00a0It will be Fritz\u2019s third final this year, having won\u00a0the opposite\u00a02\u00a0at Indian Wells and Eastbourne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Saturday frances Tiafoe\u00a0additional\u00a0a touch\u00a0a lot of\u00a0sparkle to his already\u00a0sparkly\u00a0season by beating South Korea\u2019s Kwon Soon-woo 6-2 0-6 6-4\u00a0to line\u00a0up\u00a0to\u00a0all-American final against Taylor Fritz at the Japan Open. In\u00a0September the\u00a0American reached his\u00a01st\u00a0Grand slam\u00a0semi-final at the U.S. Open, reached his second title-decider of the season despite a poor second set in his\u00a0triumph. \u201cIt was a weird […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7708,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,41],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7709,"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7706\/revisions\/7709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportzoclock.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}