Paul wins second career ATP title with Dallas Open victory

DALLAS (AP) — Second-seeded Tommy Paul won his second career ATP title, surging ahead by winning the first three games in the third set and beating unseeded Marcos Giron 7-6 (3), 5-7, 6-3 in an all-American final at the Dallas Open on Sunday.

Neither player had dropped a set on the hardcourt in Dallas before the final.

Paul held serve to open the deciding set, and again in the third game. He took the second game that included Giron's third double fault of the match.

It was the fourth ATP final for the 15th-ranked Paul, a 26-year-old from New Jersey. His previous title came in 2021 in Stockholm.

The 30-year-old Giron, who had already defeated two other top-20 opponents in Dallas, was trying to win his first ATP title. The Californian lost his only previous final in San Diego two years ago, the same year he reached the semifinals in Dallas before losing a three-setter that had tiebreakers in the final two sets.

Giron won the second set after breaking serve in the 11th game, then the 67th-ranked player served to win the set without giving up a point.

After neither player allowed a point in winning his first service game of the match, Giron hadn’t lost a service game in the Dallas tournament until Paul took the third game.

Giron had won eight consecutive sets in his four matches to reach the final, and hadn’t given up five games until the first set against Paul, which featured several extended rallies.

Paul then went from 40-love to deuce in the 11th game before Giron held for a 6-5 lead. But, Paul then held serve to force the tiebreaker.

Wu Yibing, who last year at Dallas became the first Chinese player to win an ATP Tour title, wasn’t in this year’s field.

The Dallas Open has been played on the SMU campus all three years since moving to Texas, but next year will be an expanded ATP event played in a bigger location.

When upgraded to ATP 500 level from ATP 250 next year, the Dallas Open will be played at Ford Center at The Star, the world headquarters and training facility of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. That facility, about 20 miles north in Frisco, Texas, will have a fan capacity of about 6,000, up from around 2,100 at SMU.

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