Paris - 09/11

Good morning and welcome back to TIE-Breakfast: all the tennis you need with breakfast.

Ace Cream's daily newsletter during Masters 1000s and Grand Slams, every morning at 8:30.

Today is Monday, November 9, and in Paris it is 08:30 and 5 degrees. Ok, here we go.

Today at Breakfast

• 🇪🇸 Alcaraz beats Shelton and wins Paris for the first time
• 🇫🇷 Halys and Herbert win the doubles in front of their home crowd

WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY:

🇪🇸 Alcaraz beats Shelton and wins Paris for the first time

Carlos Alcaraz beat Ben Shelton 7-6(5), 7-5 to win the Paris Masters 1000 for the first time, at a tournament where before this week he had never gone past the quarterfinals. It is the ninth Masters 1000 of his career and his first of the season, a week after his title in Vienna. He now has 29 career titles, five of them in 2026. In the second set Shelton went a break up, but Alcaraz recovered and closed it out by breaking him in the twelfth game. After David Ferrer in 2012, he is the second Spaniard to win this tournament.

This year Alcaraz was out for more than four months with a wrist problem, which cost him Roland Garros and Wimbledon. Shelton had his chances, and afterwards he summed them up with some honesty: "If you miss your chance, another isn't going to come." The US Open rematch comes a week before Turin, where both will be, and a final like this, won without playing at his best in the early games, may count for more than the score suggests.

🇫🇷 Halys and Herbert win the doubles in front of their home crowd

In the doubles final, wild cards Quentin Halys and Pierre-Hugues Herbert beat Christian Harrison and Neal Skupski, the No. 2 seeds and this year's Australian Open and US Open champions, 7-6(3), 6-7(4), 10-8 in one hour and 50 minutes. There was one break each in the first set, and the French pair took the tie-break. In the second they had a match point, saved by Skupski with a backhand drop volley, and the tie-break went the other way. In the match tie-break Halys and Herbert went up 9-6, Harrison and Skupski saved the first two match points, and on the third Herbert finished it with a reflex volley that landed on the line.

It is their first Masters 1000 title together, and Herbert's second title in Paris after the one in 2019 with Nicolas Mahut. Halys and Herbert are the fourth all-French team to win here, and Herbert is the first Frenchman with eight Masters 1000 titles. "It really is a special one. I have had a tough year and to be able to win here with Quentin is amazing," Herbert said. "To finish the year with a title is amazing. It is giving me so much confidence," Halys added. Harrison and Skupski's defeat hands the year-end doubles No. 1 to Harri Heliövaara and Henry Patten, while the beaten pair will meet again in Turin.

Read More

• ATP Paris: Shelton tries, Alcaraz wins it with class. Ninth Masters 1000 of his career
• Paris Masters 1000, Alcaraz triumphs: Shelton beaten in the final
• "If you miss your chance, another isn't going to come": Shelton on the small window against Alcaraz

Enjoy your breakfast and have a great day.

See you on November 16 at 08:30 with TIE-Breakfast.