Arthur Fils becomes Cincinnati Open’s first Black men’s champion

History was made on both sides of the net at the 2026 Cincinnati Open.

This year’s tournament, held at the Lindner Family Tennis Center in Mason, featured several significant milestones for Black representation in professional tennis.

Arthur Fils and Frances Tiafoe made history as the first two Black men to meet in an ATP Masters 1000 final. Fils also became the first Black player to win a men’s singles title at the Cincinnati Open, tournament spokesperson Pete Holtermann confirmed to The Enquirer. Fils defeated Tiafoe 6-3, 1-6, 6-0 to take the title.

The 22-year-old French player also became the third Black man to win an ATP Masters 1000 final, joining Ben Shelton, a two-time Canadian Open champion, and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who won the 2008 Paris Masters.

Coco Gauff, meanwhile, capped the tournament with a women’s singles title that may have added another historic first to the event’s record book.

The 22-year-old from Delray Beach, Florida, captured her second career Rookwood Cup with a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Jessica Pegula on Sunday night. Thus, it marked the first time in Cincinnati Open history that a Black man and a Black woman won the tournament’s singles titles in the same year.

However, Fils and Gauff are not the first players to reach this milestone at a top-level professional tournament. Shelton won the National Bank Open men’s singles title in Toronto in 2025, while Victoria Mboko captured the women’s singles crown in Montreal during the same tournament.

In 2023, Gauff became the first teenager to win the Cincinnati Open since 1968, earning her fourth career WTA 1000 title. The world No. 4 is the third player since the WTA arrived in Mason in 2004 to win multiple Cincinnati titles, joining Serena Williams (2014, 2015) and Victoria Azarenka (2013, 2020).

The Enquirer’s Shelby Dermer and Yanyan Li contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Arthur Fils becomes Cincinnati Open’s first Black men’s champion