Taylor Fritz won the DC Open on Sunday, beating Rafael Jodar 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 for his first Washington title and the best hardcourt week of his summer. The story on the other side of the net is the bigger one. Jodar, the 19-year-old Spaniard who broke into the top 100 during the spring clay swing, reached his first ATP 500 final by taking out Musetti and Tabilo back to back. He leaves Washington projected into the top 30 and confirmed as the next name in the Spanish pipeline behind Alcaraz.
The women's final did not finish. Rain suspended the Pegula-Eala championship match on Sunday with Pegula a set up, 6-4, and Eala leading 2-1 in the second. It resumes Monday. Alexandra Eala, the 20-year-old Filipina, is into her first WTA 500 final after taking out Osaka in the semis.
The Canadian Open opens this week. Men in Montreal, women in Toronto. The reason it is split across two cities, and why the cities swap every year, is this edition's Conversations in the Van.
Mubadala DC Open (ATP 500) — Final
Round | Match | Score |
|---|---|---|
F | Fritz [1] d. Jodar | 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 |
Mubadala DC Open (WTA 500) — Final (suspended, resumes Monday)
Round | Match | Score |
|---|---|---|
F | Pegula [1] vs Eala (susp.) | 6-4, 1-2 (rain) |
Fritz wins his first DC title and his first trophy since the grass swing; a clean hardcourt tune-up.
Jodar, 19, reaches his first 500 final and projects into the top 30, the highest a Spanish teenager has been since Alcaraz.
Jodar beat Musetti and Tabilo back to back; the run is not a fluke draw.
Eala into her first WTA 500 final after beating Osaka; projected into the top 20 whatever Monday brings.
Pegula reached her fourth final of 2026; the DC weather, not the tennis, is the obstacle.
Alcaraz's Cincinnati return (August 10) still on; he skips Canada.
De Minaur lost the DC quarterfinal as defending champion; the title defence ended early.
Shelton reached the DC semis for the third straight year before losing to Fritz.
🎯 PICK 1 · RAFAEL JODAR · To reach the Montreal R3
Carrying the DC final momentum onto a bigger stage; the 19-year-old's draw opens through the first two rounds. The ranking is real now.
🎯 PICK 2 · JESSICA PEGULA · To reach the Toronto QF
Assuming the DC final goes her way Monday, the form is the cleanest of any American on hardcourt. Toronto is home-continent and her surface.
🎯 PICK 3 · ELENA RYBAKINA · To win Toronto
The best hardcourt server in the women's draw, a favourable section, and a form curve that has quietly rebuilt since the RG loss. The 1000 is there.
The Tipster Corner is analytical commentary, not financial advice. Always bet responsibly.
The Canadian Open is the only tournament in professional tennis that is held in two different cities at the same time. This week, the men play in Montreal and the women play in Toronto. Next year, they swap: the men to Toronto, the women to Montreal. This has been the arrangement, with a consistent annual swap, since 1981. No other event on either tour does anything like it. Understanding why is a small window into how tennis tournaments actually come to exist, which is almost never by design and almost always by accident of history.
The Canadian Championships were founded in 1881 at the Toronto Lawn Tennis Club, the third-oldest national tennis championship in the world after Wimbledon (1877) and the US Championships (1881, the same year). For its first century, it moved around. The men's event was played at private clubs in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Quebec City, and even Niagara Falls, depending on the year and the host club's willingness. There was no fixed home. The women's championship, added in 1892, moved similarly. The tournament was a travelling national championship in the way that many pre-Open-Era events were, following the clubs that would host it rather than committing to a city.
The modern arrangement was forced by growth. By the late 1970s, both the men's and women's events had grown too large for the private-club circuit and needed permanent, purpose-built tennis facilities. Canada had, and has, exactly two cities with the market size, the corporate base, and the tennis infrastructure to host a top-tier professional event: Toronto and Montreal. The problem was that both events could not be in the same city in the same week, because a single city's facilities, hotels, broadcast crews, and corporate sponsorship base could not support two simultaneous top-tier tournaments. And neither city was willing to permanently cede the men's event, the historically bigger draw, to the other.
The solution, reached in 1981, was the swap. The men's event and the women's event would each be permanently housed, one in Toronto and one in Montreal, but which event went to which city would alternate every year. In even years the men were in one city, in odd years the other, with the women always in the opposite. This gave both cities a top-tier event every year, gave both cities the marquee men's event every other year, and split the corporate and broadcast burden across two markets. It was a negotiated truce between two cities that both wanted the bigger prize and neither would surrender it. Tennis, uniquely, codified that truce into a permanent tournament structure.
The result is genuinely strange when you compare it to the other national championships. Roland Garros is always in Paris. The Italian Open is always in Rome. The Australian Open is always in Melbourne. Each is anchored to a single capital or dominant city. Canada, alone, treats its national championship as a two-city event, which its own organisers have argued makes it the most genuinely national of all the majors, since it is not the championship of one city that happens to be in a country, but a championship distributed across the country's two tennis capitals. That framing is a retrofitted virtue. The real origin is that two Canadian cities of roughly equal size and ambition both wanted the tournament, and the only stable equilibrium was to give it to both.
There was a wrinkle in 2021. Before that year, the specific pattern had the men in Toronto in even years and Montreal in odd years, with the women reversed. In 2021 the pattern flipped, and now in even years the men are in Montreal and the women in Toronto. The flip was a scheduling adjustment tied to the pandemic-disrupted 2020 calendar and the desire to keep each city's total number of men's and women's hostings balanced over the long run. The underlying logic did not change. The two cities still split the event, still swap every year, still each get a top-tier tournament annually.
This week the best men's field of the North American summer so far is in Montreal, and the WTA's 1000 is in Toronto. Next August they will trade. The arrangement looks eccentric from the outside and is, on closer inspection, one of the most rational solutions in the sport: a way to give two deserving cities a permanent stake in the same tournament without either one having to lose. Most of tennis's quirks are accidents that never got fixed. This one is an accident that got negotiated into a genuinely elegant compromise, and then kept, because it works.
Extended Highlights: Fritz, Jodar set final clash in Washington 2026
The semifinal day that set the DC final; Jodar's breakout run continues.
Fritz and Jódar Secure Washington 2026 Final Spots
Both semifinals in one cut, including Jodar's takedown of Tabilo.
Hot Shot: Jodar demands more after winning 31-ball rally in Washington 2026
The 31-shot rally that announced the 19-year-old Spaniard's arrival.
National Bank Open (Montreal, ATP Masters 1000) · August 2 – 9 · Outdoor hard · Montreal, QC
Sinner, Zverev, Fritz, Shelton, de Minaur all entered. The strongest men's field since Rome. Alcaraz absent, returning in Cincinnati.
National Bank Open (Toronto, WTA 1000) · August 2 – 9 · Outdoor hard · Toronto, ON
Sabalenka, Gauff, Rybakina, Pegula lead the women's draw. The WTA 1000 in the other Canadian city.
On the horizon:
Cincinnati Open (M1000 + W1000) · August 10 – 17. Sinner defending; Alcaraz returns.
US Open · August 24 – September 6. Sinner defending both the title and the year-end No. 1 race.