Taylor Fritz froze Valentin Vacherot’s enthusiasm in Basel: no fairy tale this time! | ATP Tour
Taylor Fritz
Fritz froze Vaccello’s enthusiasm in Basel: this time it’s not a fairy tale!
Auger-Aliassim and Ruud are next in line to qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals
October 22, 2025
Basel Swiss Indoors
Taylor Fritz defeated Valentin Vacherot in three sets in Basel on Wednesday.
Jerome Coombe
Taylor Fritz felt the full pressure of Valentin Vacherot’s meteoric rise at the Basel Indoors in Switzerland on Wednesday, but the top seed refused to become the latest victim of Monaco’s breakout.
Vaccello, playing his first match since becoming Shanghai’s lowest-ranked ATP Masters 1000 champion, unleashed his fearless full-court aggression early on, unsettling Fritz. However, the American team came back to win the first round of the indoor hard court ATP 500 event with a score of 4-6, 7-6(4), 7-5.
After losing four set points at 5-3 in the second set and losing serve in the next game, Fritz held his own and eventually led 4/0 in the tie-break. Fritz continued the chaotic exchange, leading 4-2 in the deciding set, but he regrouped again in dramatic fashion to claim a tense victory.
“As we played, I started to understand why these conditions [in Shanghai] “It’s a perfect fit for him,” Fritz said of Vaccello. “When the ball wears out and slows down a lot, that’s when he can control me the most and dominate me. In the last game, I was able to score with the new ball. When the game is played faster, I can control the game better.”
Three weeks ago, Vaccello, No. 204 in the PIF ATP Rankings, stormed through qualifying in Shanghai and then stunned everyone, including Novak Djokovic in the semifinals, to win his first ATP Tour title. Now that he is ranked among the top 40 in the world, he can no longer impact the tenacious Fritz.
With the victory that took 2 hours and 36 minutes, Fritz continued his perfect 12-0 record in the season’s hard-court opener and took another confident step back to the Nitto ATP Finals. Last year’s runner-up is currently ranked fifth at the PIF ATP Live Event in Turin and has a 51-16 record in 2025, according to the Infosys ATP Win/Loss Index.
Fritz will next face Ugo Humbert, who defeated Sebastian Korda 6-3, 6-4 in the Stockholm final last week and continued his form. The Frenchman has now won 14 of his last 16 indoor matches, highlighted by his run to the ATP Masters 1000 final in Paris last year and his victory in Marseille in February.
Felix Auger-Aliassime and Casper Ruud both earned crucial first-round wins on Wednesday in their bid to qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals. Auger-Aliassime defeated compatriot and friend Gabriel Diallo 6-2, 7-5, while Rudd beat lucky loser Quentin Harris 6-1, 7-6(3).
After claiming titles in Brussels and Stockholm last week, Auger-Aliassime and Ruud have increased the pressure on eighth-placed Lorenzo Musetti, who competes in Vienna at the PIF ATP Turin this week. Auger-Aliassime was ninth and Rudd was 11th, but 10th-place finisher Jake Draper missed the remainder of the season due to injury.
“he [Diallo] Auger-Aliassime, who won back-to-back Basel titles in 2022-23, said, “It’s hard to play against such a good friend, it’s a little embarrassing… I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous at the beginning of a game. “We send each other messages throughout the year to encourage each other. It’s great that we can play against each other on the ATP Tour. “
Auger-Aliassime will next face qualifier Marin Cilic in the second round in Basel, while Rudd will take on 40-year-old Swiss wildcard Stan Wawrinka, who won their only previous Lexus ATP head-to-head match at the 2022 event.
Lucky Botic van de Zandschulp also booked a place in the second round on Wednesday with a 6-2, 6-2 victory over in-form Jiri Lehecka, who reached the Brussels final last week. Joao Fonseca advances to the quarter-finals after #NextGenATP star Jakub Mensik was forced to withdraw from the tournament with a left foot injury.
