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It was a long time coming but the home crowd in Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy stadium witnessed a Frenchman winning the Paris Masters indoor tournament again after 2001.

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga from France faced off against David Nalbandian from Argentina in the final on Sunday. The stakes were high with both the winner's trophy and the last berth of the ATP season ending Tennis Masters cup in Shanghai up for grabs.

Nalbandian, the defending champion, had history against him going into the match as no one has ever successfully defended the title in the tournament's 33 year long history.

The Frenchman won the first set so quickly that Nalbandian seemed a bit stunned. In the latter part of the set Nalbandian tried to get into his stride but had no answers for his opponent's booming serves and searing ground strokes. Tsonga won the set 6-3.

Nalbandian showed a lot more grit in the second set but just could not seem to serve as well as he usually does. By this time the French crowd had established itself firmly behind their local boy. The 'Tsonga-Tsonga' chants were more reminiscent of a football crowd than the normally subdued European tennis watching public and the chair umpire had a tough time getting the crowd in some semblance of order. Tsonga seemed to feed off the crowd's excitement and served down ace after ace. But grit won out in the end and in his effort to please the crowd with aces Tsonga dipped his court play substantially. He ended up getting broken at 4-5 to give the set to Nalbandian 6-4.

The decider saw Tsonga raising his game again and the aces too kept coming. The Frenchman pulled away from Nalbandian winning the second game without giving a single point away. Nalbandian seemed to get a bit flustered with all the crowd support for his opponent and got broken in the third game with some uncharacteristic unforced errors.This turned out to be the decisive break in the match as both players held their serves after this and Tsonga won the set and the tournament 6-3, 4-6, 6-4. Tsonga served down a mammoth 25 aces in the match.

With this win the 23 year old Tsonga has booked his place in the season ending Tennis Masters cup in Shanghai starting on the 9th where only the top eight players in the world battle it out.

Photograph Copyright: Paphio