DC Open Day Five roundup: Taylor Fritz suffers upset defeat, Ben Shelton downs Frances Tiafoe

The DC Open had a day of upsets on Friday in the men's singles category, as two players who were hoping to reach the last four ended up on the losing side. In the blockbuster showdown on the prime time, pre-tournament favourite and top-seed America’s Taylor Fritz lost to Spain’s Alejandro Davidovich Fokina.

It was the Spaniard who started the proceedings brilliantly and won the first set on a tie-break with a score of 7-3. In the second set, Fritz showcased his talent and ended up breaking Davidovich Fokina’s serve in the fourth game to take a 3-1 lead. He won the set with a score of 6-3. In the third set, Fritz looked all set to go on and win the contest after breaking Davidovich Fokina’s serve in the third game. Fritz then went up 4-1 after breaking his opponent’s serve again.

However, Davidovich Fokina made a strong comeback and managed to make it 5-5 before eventually winning the contest with a score of 7-5. The victory was a massive one for Davidovich Fokina, who lost to the same opponent at Wimbledon recently in the third round. Not only that, but he also lost to Fritz in the semifinal of the Lexus Eastbourne Open. Talking after the match, Davidovich Fokina admitted that he considers himself lucky after losing two service games in the deciding set but still went on to win the contest against the top-seed in the competition. Davidovich Fokina also stated that he was ‘very happy’ with his fighting spirit. “Today I was lucky,” he said. “He was serving for the match, I was two points down from going to the locker room and go to Toronto. I am very happy how I fought for today.”

Overall, it will be Davidovich Fokina’s fifth semifinal of an ATP event in 2025. In the previous four, he managed to win two (against Denis Shapovalov and Matteo Arnaldi) and suffered defeats on the other two occasions (against Fritz and Carlos Alcaraz). Earlier in the day, eighth-seed Russia’s Daniil Medvedev suffered an upset defeat to France’s Corentin Moutet. Medvedev started the match brightly by winning the first set with a score of 6-1. However, Moutet made a grand comeback and won the following two sets with a score of 6-4, 6-4.

In the match before Fritz and Davidovich Fokina, it was an all-American battle between Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe. It was the fourth meeting between the two players and the first in 2025. In the previous three meetings, Shelton had a slight edge with two wins. In the first set, both players managed to keep their serve, and it was eventually decided in the tiebreaker, where Shelton came out on top.

In the second set, however, Shelton proved too strong for Tiafoe and won the set and the match with a score of 7-6, 6-4. Talking after the match, Shelton admitted that it was tough playing against a player of Tiafoe’s quality. He stated that he is looking forward to playing against the fellow American more times in the future.

"We know tennis is a long journey,” he said. “We’re going to play each other a bunch of times. Especially, we’ve already played on the hard courts, we’ve already played twice at the US Open, and he beat me the most recent time. It's tough not to cheer for a guy like that.”

Shelton will now face Davidovich Fokina in the last-four clash. It will be the third meeting between the two players. In the previous two, Shelton ended on the wrong side of the result on each occasion. Their most recent meeting was in the round of 64 of the Monte-Carlo Masters earlier this year, where Davidovich Fokina emerged victorious with a score of 6-7, 6-2, 6-1.