Arthur Fils - future Roland Garros champion?

**SPEAKER_2** (0:11)
Well, hello, and welcome to your Monday Morning Tennis Podcast. We have a lot to discuss on today's show. Titles yesterday for Elena Rybakina, Marta Kostyuk, Ben Shelton and Arthur Fils.
And we, of course, have an exhilarated David Law with us this morning. How are you doing, David?

**David Law** (0:34)
Yeah, I'm exhilarated. Pretty standard, but it has been a heck of a good week of tennis, loads going on and nice weather as well here in sunny, solid halls, so particularly exhilarated.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:49)
Matt, still exhilarated from Fulham's 0-0 with Brentford on Saturday.

**Matt Roberts** (0:57)
I was annoyed I couldn't get a ticket for that and then really pleased I didn't get a ticket for that because, my God, what a dreadful match. But I was thrilled for David. I feel like we had an hour period on, was it Saturday, where West Brom scored a load of goals, Arthur Fils was winning. It was all coming up, David.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:18)
Yeah, it was all coming up, David Law. Arthur Fils is coming, David. Part two.
Can you hang on until then?

**David Law** (1:26)
No trouble, no trouble. This is only the calm before the storm anyway. I mean, Barcelona is alright, so I'm just pacing myself.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:33)
This is the appetizer.
We're going to head to Stuttgart, first of all, and the WTA 500 event there won by Elena Rybakina. 7-5-6-1 over Karolina Muchova in the final. She won all sorts of tennis matches, did Elena Rybakina in all sorts of different ways over the course of the week. She beat Leylah Fernandez in the quarterfinals in a deciding set tiebreak. Then she beat Mirra Andreeva in the semifinals, and she returns now to the top of the WTA race. She is firmly number two in the rankings, about 2,000 points behind Irina Sabalenka. But in Elrace, she is number one. Matt, on Thursday evening, we lit a bit of a fire under Stuttgart, didn't we? We said it's been a crap slow start. Please sort yourselves out and give us a thrilling three days. And fair play, Stuttgart. I think it's fair to say they delivered.

**Matt Roberts** (2:39)
I'll say, yeah. I mean, with that quarterfinal lineup that was set up, hard for it not to deliver. But then I do feel like we've, you know, see the Australian Open where we had great matches all along and did not deliver for the most part. But no, Stuttgart really did. And Rybakina just continues to be in incredible form, doesn't she?
This is now the first time she's won multiple titles somewhere. She has removed the Medvedev curse over her little collection of titles. She won this back in 2024, and she didn't play it last year. So she's on a real streak, actually, in Stuttgart. And those conditions, indoors, obviously we saw what she can do on an indoor hard court back in the WTA finals last year against the best players in the world. And on clay, I do think the indoor clay is a good surface for a little bit of time on the ball and so dominant on both serve and return. And look, she had to get through that match against Fernandez because actually that was a match that resembled the Rybakina of a couple of years ago, even the start of last year where she would get embroiled in these matches where the momentum swinging back and forth. And you're thinking, why is Rybakina in these matches?
She's so good on serve and so good on return. She simply shouldn't be involved in these matches. I would say big credit to Leylah Fernandez, who's often played Rybakina very tough and has made some of their matches quite messy in the past. I think Fernandez's retrieval skills, her angles, her ability to take the ball early, occasionally resort to the slice, like all just caused a bit of problems for Rybakina and she was unconvincing in that one. You know, even two double faults in the final set tie break that she did manage to win. But I think in the past that might have carried on for Rybakina, we might have seen that sort of performance again in one of her other matches in the tournament. But this time she just resorted back to the brilliant form that she'd been in all season. And I think, I think Andreeva and Muchova were not quite either of them at their sort of physical best in the semifinal or final. They both perhaps faded a little bit, but Rybakina was just awesome. And I think actually the final against Muchova, it felt more one-sided than 7-5-6-1. Muchova did well to make that first set close. But really, Rybakina had a poor game when she came to serve it out at the first attempt with her forehand, which is still the shot that can go missing a little bit. But it was only briefly because she was absolutely phenomenal for the rest of the match. And yeah, I was watching that tennis thinking, this is alongside Sabalenka, the best tennis that we have right now on the WTA. It is so, so good.