Arthur Fils' 'excuse' to fight harder and beat Stefanos Tsitsipas may have been the best reason to like his future yet 

“I tried to find a way to fight,” Arthur Fils said after his comeback win over Stefanos Tsitsipas in Rome on Sunday. “So I found this, this kind of excuse to go ahead and fight.”

Any port in a storm will do, right? For the first set and a half, the winds inside the Grand Stand at the Foro Italico were blowing fully against the Frenchman. Tsitsipas was bullying his way forward with his forehand and sending Fils scrambling from corner to corner behind the baseline. The amped up afternoon crowd wasn’t helping matters, either. Their love and noise mostly went to Tsitsipas, as Greek flags and colors fluttered around the arena.

At 3-3 in the second set, though, Tsitsipas hit a winning shot that he would regret. With Fils at the net, Tsitsipas bent low for a short backhand, and whipped the ball up and straight into Fils’s shoulder. Tsitsipas raised his arms in apology right away, and went on to hold. Whether he was sorry or not, whether he did it purposefully or not, Fils had his reason—a physical affront—to up his intensity level and make the match a little more personal.

Read more: Arthur Fils downplays handshake dispute with Stefanos Tsitsipas in Rome

“He told me at the end, he wasn’t going for my body,” Fils aid after he and Tsitipas had a prolonged and semi-heated exchange when the match was over. “I said, ‘I know it, it’s all good, I just needed to find a way to fight.’”

You can add that moment to the reasons to like Fils’ future; it might even be the most important so far. We know about his forehand, his athleticism, his Orange Bowl win as a 16-year-old, his Top 20 ranking as a 20-year-old. But the players who rise farther, who win majors, who reside in the Top 5 for long stretches, who turn losses into wins, are the self-motivators. Looking at Serena Williams the wrong way for half a second might be enough to doom your chances against her.

“I kind of liked that he got a little petty today,” Andy Roddick said of Fils on the Tennis Channel Live podcast on Sunday. “He was going down and he found a way to interject himself into the match. He makes something out of nothing.”

This is a big, potentially career-changing moment for Fils. He’s at a career-high No. 14, and expectations for him will be greater than ever at Roland Garros, where fans have been waiting for a French men’s winner for 42 years, since Yannick Noah’s 1983 title run. The most recent Musketeer generation—led by Gael Monfils, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Richard Gasquet—promised much, but had the misfortune of playing the tournament at the same time as Rafael Nadal and the Big 3. Now the Rafa era is over, and the field is much more open.

He found a way to interject himself into the match. He makes something out of nothing. Andy Roddick on Arthur Fils' win over Stefanos Tsitsipas

So far, though, Fils hasn’t looked like the man to fill that void; he’s 0-2 for his career at Roland Garros. And there have been reasons to doubt his Slam-winning chances in general. His ball-striking isn’t as pure as that of Carlos Alcaraz or Jannik Sinner; Fils tends to muscle his shots and overswing, like his role model Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

But this spring he has found another level, and showed more of his potential. Fils made the quarters in Indian Wells, Miami, and Monte Carlo, and the semis in Barcelona. While he lost to Alcaraz in Monte Carlo, that might have been his best, most promising match so far. He went toe-to-toe with the four-time Slam winner, and had him on the ropes for much of the day, before losing in three sets. Even if his ball-striking wasn’t a pure as the Spaniard’s, his shots were as heavy and damaging. It looked like a Grand Slam final of the future.

Maybe most encouraging was the way Fils refused to take a moral victory from the defeat. Emotionally, it was win or bust for the Frenchman.

“It’s frustrating, because I had many opportunities to get ahead in the score and I didn’t make it,” he said. “... I lost my focus at some moments that I shouldn’t have.

“This loss hurts.”

After his win over one recent Roland Garros runner-up, Tsitsipas, Fils will take on another in Alexander Zverev, on Tuesday. The two have played a series of fiercely contested matches over the last two years. We’ll see if Fils can find another “excuse” to win, and make the folks back home a little more excited for his upcoming trip to Paris.