The firm game of Carreño Busta overcomes the power of Hurkacz in the Montreal final

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Hubert Hurkacz made his big serve work, but it wasn’t enough on Sunday as he lost in the final of an ATP Tour event for the first time in six attempts.

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Unseeded Pablo Carreno Busta of Spain proved more stable from the baseline and made the most of his occasional forays into the net as he defeated eighth-seeded Poland 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 in the final. of the National Bank Open tennis. championships at the IGA Stadium.

While Carreño Busta couldn’t match Hurkacz’s serving power, his delivery was more consistent throughout the week. When Hurkacz broke serve from him for a 4-2 lead in the first set, it was only the fourth time Carreno Busta had lost a serve in the entire tournament and he never faced another break point in the match.

Hurkacz had 18 aces on Sunday against four from the Spaniard, but faced three break points and lost them all.

After dropping the first set, Carreno Busta broke Hurkacz for a 2-0 lead in the second.

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“I don’t know if I was tired, but it’s true that when I broke in the second set, I had more confidence,” Carreno Busta said. “I feel like, yes, I can win this match. When I lost the first set with just one break on the first (break point) he has, I was a little down. But after the break I think I was positive again. I tried to continue this way. It was very important, right? After the break in the third set, I’m still serving well and being aggressive. I finally had a break again to win the match, but I was ready to serve if it got to 5-4.”

“Pablo played a good game (and) I didn’t make first serves,” Hurkacz said. “Little things make a big difference. I mean, if you’re not making first serves and Pablo played a couple of good returns, then you’re under a lot of pressure.”

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While Carreno Busta is more comfortable playing from the baseline, he won 13 of 16 points at the net for an 81 percent success rate.

Fatigue could have been a factor for Hurkacz. All five of her singles matches went to three sets and she also reached the doubles semifinals, finishing her semifinal at 1:39 am on Sunday.

“I was feeling good, but it’s definitely been a busy week,” he said, “Every day, basically from 9am to 10pm, I was working. But I gave everything I could this week, so I’m happy with that.”

It was Carreño Busta’s first Masters 1000 title. He earned $915,295 and improved his ATP ranking from No. 23 to No. 14. He became the first unseeded player to win the Canadian Open title since Argentina’s Guillermo Cañas defeated Andy Roddick in 2002. Hurkacz, which will remain at No. 10, earned $488,830.

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In the doubles final, third seed Dutch Wesley Koolhof and Britain’s Neal Skupski defeated Britain’s Daniel Evans and Australia’s John Peers 6-2, 4-6, 10-6 to win their sixth title of the year. $288,820 was distributed.

The previous Sunday, tournament director Eugène Lapierre announced that the event set another attendance record for a one-week tournament with 237,158 spectators. That’s about 12,000 more than the previous mark set in 2019. While rain interrupted play earlier in the week, there were no instances where the tournament had to issue rain checks for next year’s tournament and interest remained high despite the loss of the top three finishers in their opening matches.

Toronto had its largest turnout for the women’s event, but the total was less than 150,000.

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