Griekspoor Wins Brussels Title on the Court He Called 'Completely Different'

TL;DR: Tallon Griekspoor won the European Open in Brussels on Sunday, beating Jan-Lennard Struff 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 for his fourth ATP title and his first since Mallorca in 2025. The title came on the very court he had complained about two days earlier, when he told the chair umpire the new playing area was three times as big to the side and three times as big to the back. He then won three straight three-set matches on that court, and the title returns him to the top 50.

The complaint came first, the trophy came second, and the order is the story. On Friday, Griekspoor stood at the net after losing a set and argued, on a microphone the whole arena could hear, that the tournament had handed him a different sport to play. On Sunday, he lifted the trophy on that same court, in that same hall, after three comeback wins in a row. Players complain about conditions every week. Almost none of them then go and win the tournament on the conditions they complained about.

What did Griekspoor say to the umpire?

He said the new court was not the court he had been playing on all week. After dropping the first set 6-4 to second seed Jiri Lehecka in Friday’s quarter-final, Griekspoor told the chair umpire the court was three times as big to the side and three times as big to the back, EssentiallySports reports. His words, as heard on the broadcast, were blunt: “We have a whole different court because of this. The speed of the court, I fully believe it, but why do we have different measurements of the side and the back? You know what I mean? It’s a completely different thing. I understand the whole moving thing, but why is the size of the court not the same as it is there?”

The distinction matters, because Griekspoor was careful about what he was and was not objecting to. He said he understood the move itself. What he could not accept was that the replacement playing area did not match the one where he had won his first two matches of the week. A bigger run-back changes how far a player can chase, how much room a serve has to swing, and how a rally breathes. For a player whose week was built on serving, that is not a detail.

Why did the tournament move courts midweek?

Because the original arena had concerts booked. The European Open moved the second half of the tournament from the ING Arena to Palais 5, another hall in the same Brussels Expo complex, from October 23, EssentiallySports reports. The ING Arena’s weekend diary was full of music, with concerts on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, while the tennis carried on next door.

The move was planned, but the friction around it was not confined to the players. The same switch had already drawn fan complaints about obstructed views on tickets sold at full price, a story covered in the desk’s earlier Brussels venue article. Griekspoor’s complaint added the players’ version of the same grievance: the people in the stands could not see properly, and the man on the court felt he was playing on a different court. The tournament is only in its second year in Brussels after nearly a decade in Antwerp, and a week like this is the kind that tests whether a venue can hold a tournament at all.

How did the quarter-final turn after the complaint?

Griekspoor put the argument down and won the match. He took the second set 6-4, broke Lehecka at 3-2 in the third, and closed out a 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 win on his second match point, EssentiallySports reports. It was his third career win over Lehecka, and it ended the Czech’s hopes of a third straight European Open final.

The win also fit the shape of his week. Griekspoor had opened with a career-best 34 aces in a three-set win over German teenager Max Schönhaus, then beaten eighth seed Mariano Navone 7-6(4), 7-5. By the end of the Lehecka match, his serve had become the weapon of the tournament, with more than 50 aces across three matches. The complaint had been about space and dimensions. The answer, it turned out, was to serve through them.

How did he win the title on Sunday?

The same way he had won everything else that week: from a set down. In Saturday’s semi-final, third seed Francisco Cerundolo took the first set before Griekspoor fought back to win in three. In Sunday’s final, Jan-Lennard Struff, playing his first final in more than two years after upsetting top seed Arthur Fils, took the opener 6-4, Tennis TourTalk reports.

Then the match turned the way Griekspoor’s week had kept turning. He broke Struff at 3-4 in the second set and won 12 of the final 15 points of that set, TennisNow reports. The third stayed locked at 4-4 without a break point chance until Struff faltered in the ninth game, dropping serve at 15. Griekspoor served out the title at love and dropped to his knees. The final score, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, took two hours and two minutes, and it was his third straight three-set win of the week.

His words afterwards were as honest as his complaint had been. “Another big fight. Very, very challenging match again,” he said on court, TennisNow reports. “I don’t know how it went my way. I just tried to stay in there, hang in there. I wasn’t playing my best tennis in the first set. Somehow, I found some good tennis towards the end of the match.” Then, addressing his team, he went further: “It’s been a very, very difficult year for me. Some very, very tough moments on the court, off the court, where I lost the belief sometimes. You guys never, never lost the belief in me.”

What does the title do to his season and ranking?

It rescues both. Griekspoor arrived in Brussels ranked No. 60 with a 15-21 record for the season, EssentiallySports reports, after first-round losses at three straight tournaments in China. The title is his fourth on tour and his first since Mallorca in June 2025, his first indoor title, and his second on a hard court. He is also the first Dutchman to win the European Open since the event joined the tour in 2016, Tennis TourTalk reports.

The ranking reward follows on Monday: Griekspoor gains ten places to return to the top 50, TennisTemple reports, while Struff climbs eleven spots to No. 47. Griekspoor’s career high is No. 21, reached in 2023, so the top 50 is a staging post rather than a destination. But after a year in which he withdrew from the Dubai final in February and lost five of six matches before Brussels, according to the final reports, a trophy and a top-50 return change the shape of his season in a single week.

Why does this story stick?

Because it is rare for a complaint and a coronation to share the same court in the same week. Tennis players argue with umpires about conditions constantly, and most of the time the argument is the last anyone hears of it, because the player loses. Griekspoor argued, then won three matches on the court he had questioned, including a final in which he was outplayed for a set and still found the tennis to win. The Brussels organisers will still have questions to answer about a midweek move that upset fans and players alike, and the obstructed-views backlash has not gone away. But the player who spoke loudest about the new court is the one leaving town with the trophy, which is the kind of ending that makes the complaint read differently in hindsight: not an excuse, but a footnote to a week in which the serve, the fight and the patience all held up. For a player who had lost belief, as he put it himself, that is worth more than the ranking points, in the same way that other comeback weeks this month, from a ball-kid warning that became a comeback to a doping alarm that became a final, have shown how quickly a tournament can rewrite a season.