Fils and Van Assche Start with Wins at Next Gen Finals

The tournament, featuring top ATP Tour players under 21, is being held in Saudi Arabia for the first time.

Arthur Fils and Luca Van Assche both started their campaigns for the Next Gen Finals title with wins in the round-robin stage.
The tournament is being held in Saudi Arabia for the first time, after being staged in Milan since its inaugural edition in 2017.
The Next Gen Finals are played using special rules, with a best-of-five-sets format in which each set goes to the player who is first to four games, with a tiebreak at 3-3.
Of the players ranked above Fils who would be eligible by age, Carlos Alcaraz and Holger Rune are exempt because they qualified for the ATP Finals, while Ben Shelton is out for medical reasons and Lorenzo Musetti withdrew on personal grounds.
In the green group, Flavio Cobolli won against Dominic Stricker, and in the red group, Hamad Medjedovic withstood a comeback from Alex Michelsen.