Alcaraz holds off Fils; Monte Carlo champ Tsitsipas crashes out

Carlos Alcaraz won from behind against Arthur Fils while defending champion Stefanos Tsitsipas was bounced out in the Monte Carlo Masters quarterfinals Friday.

World No. 3 Alcaraz was five points from defeat in the second set and 3-1 down in the deciding set but pulled through 4-6, 7-5, 6-3 after 2½ hours.

Fils, playing in his third straight Masters quarterfinals, let off Alcaraz no thanks to 53 unforced errors.

“I have missed clay,” Alcaraz said.

Preparing for his French Open title defense, Alcaraz is into his first Monte Carlo semifinals, an all-Spanish affair against 2022 runner-up Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, who beat Alexei Popyrin 6-3, 6-2. They haven’t met on tour in two years.

Fils got off to a blistering start against Alcaraz, surging to a 3-0 lead with two early breaks. Alcaraz fought back to retrieve one break and had four chances to level in the fourth game, but Fils held firm. The Spaniard eventually drew level at 4-4, only for Fils to break once more and move ahead 5-4 before wrapping up the set after saving another two break points.

Fils wasted seven break points, however, in the second set, and Alcaraz leveled the match with a superb lob to steal Fils’ serve in the 12th game.

Alcaraz remained inconsistent and dropped serve once again in the third game of the decider. But he eventually broke back and got another break in the eighth game to the frustration of Fils, who smashed his racket on the clay and could not regain his poise in the final game, allowing Alcaraz to finish the win off routinely.

“I believe that true champions find the right level when necessary. Of course, I’d like to be able to play my best tennis from the first point to the last,” Alcaraz said. “But we played for almost two hours, 30 minutes, and that’s the hardest thing in tennis: maintaining your best level over such a long period. So when necessary, it’s good to get back to your best shots. And then sometimes, in certain sequences, the opponent is better than you and you have to accept that and keep fighting.”

Tsitsipas couldn’t understand where it all went wrong against Lorenzo Musetti. The Monte Carlo champion in 2021, 2022 and 2024 had a perfect 5-0 record against Musetti and took the first set on Friday 6-1.

But from that point, Tsitsipas’ serve evaporated. He made less than half of his first serves, only eight of 28 in the last set. One of his seven double faults put him down 4-3 in the last set. Musetti won the last two sets 6-3, 6-4.

“It’s difficult to accept,” Tsitsipas said. “I mean, feeling so confident playing on this court and not being able to win a match that I felt I kind of had every reason to … is definitely heartbreaking.”

Musetti cried when he won.

He will face Alex de Minaur, who reached his first semifinals on clay in three years after drubbing Grigor Dimitrov 6-0, 6-0 in 44 minutes. Dimitrov committed a staggering 23 unforced errors.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.