The Frenchman Arthur Rinderknech (new: ATP 67) won a high-class final against the Belgian Joris De Loore in three sets 3:6 6:3 6:4.
Joris De Loore was the big surprise of the tournament. In the first round, he eliminated last year's winner Dominic Stricker after dropping a set. The Belgian also had to go the distance against Geoffrey Blancaneaux and Matteo Gigante in the round of 16 and quarter-finals. His reward was a semi-final against the Italian Fabio Fognini, the former ATP world number 9, which had to be played on Sunday morning due to a rain interruption. De Loore didn't let it show in the slightest, and dispatched Fognini in two sets with a strong service and solid baseline play.
For his part, top seed Rinderknech had little trouble in the first rounds against the Italians Gianmarco Ferrari and Stefano Travaglia and the Bulgarian Adrian Andreev. With a consistently good service ratio and dominant forehand strokes, the Frenchman played his way through his half of the table. A real endurance test awaited in the semi-final with Yuri Rodionov. The Austrian had played his way into the round of 16 in Gstaad the previous week by qualifying. After falling behind in sets and in a hard-fought match lasting two and a half hours, Rinderknech prevailed in three sets on the Zug Centre Court.
The Frenchman was also quickly behind in the final against De Loore and said: «I actually felt good, I got off to a good start. But suddenly I was behind with the break and couldn’t hit back.» Thanks to strong serving and a low error rate, Arthur Rinderknech took the second set and pulled away in the third at 3:3 with a break.
With the title in Zug and the 125ATP points gained, the Frenchman (new: ATP67) has improved his ranking by a whole 13 positions. After a strong summer with a quarter-final in Mallorca (ATP250) and reaching the main draw in Queen’s (ATP500) with a razor-thin defeat against Carlos Alcaraz, he is getting closer and closer to his best career ranking: 42nd position as of October 2022. After the Zug Open, Rinderknech will play the ATP125 tournament in Kitzbühel before starting the hard court season in North America.
