Tennis Atlantic

Granollers Topples Monaco for Kitzbuhel title

A pair of clay courters contested the final clay court ATP final of the year, and it would be the Spaniard, Marcel Granollers who would take it 0-6, 7-6, 6-3. Monaco got off to a totally dominant start, as the scoreline would indicate, and he looked comfortable in the first two sets just before the tiebreak. Things began to unravel though, and Granollers would take the tiebreak, then break in Set 3 and finish things off for his 4th career ATP title and first since 2011.

Monaco will improve his ranking but drops to 8-10 overall in career ATP finals, along with moving to 1-1 in finals this year. Monaco beat Andreas Haider-Maurer, Daniel Gimeno-Traver and Albert Montanes to reach the final, while Granollers took out Mate Pavic, Horacio Zeballos, Leo Mayer and Robin Haase. Haase gave it a good go, but couldn’t three-peat in Kitz, suffering a three set semifinal loss. He did beat Fernando Verdasco along the way.

Martin Emmrich and Christopher Kas took the doubles title over Frantisek Cermak and Lukas Dlouhy.

A shout out to the Austrian youngster Dominic Thiem, who beat Andrey Kuznetsov and Jurgen Melzer to reach the quarterfinals. The 19 year old is closing in on the top 200 and and has spent most of his time this year at the futures level.

—Steen Kirby