Galán & Chingotto get revenge on Tapia & Coello in Gijón P2 Final

After the season opening Riyadh P1, you couldn't have written a better script than a rematch in both the men's and women's finals.

The same fixtures, but very different games.

There is a tendency to revert to hindsight in moments like this, but after the demolition in the Riyadh, a dominant Chingotto / Galán win wasn't the obvious outcome on people's lips going into the Gijón P2 final.

Off the back of a four-game losing streak against the world number ones, Ale Galán and Fede Chingotto weren't going into this tournament as favourites.

The court at the Palacio de Deportes de La Guía was noticeably slower than the Riyadh surface where Tapia and Coello had dispatched them 6-4, 6-2 just three weeks earlier.

Chingotto understood this immediately, and knew it was his game to dictate the tempo.

His positioning was deeper than usual, his decision-making at the net more conservative — and it was the right call.

When the ball does not skid through quickly, attacking from mid-court is not bravery, it is error-farming.

Galán played the first set with uncommon patience, resisting the temptation to open up too early, instead constructing points through lateral movement and glass play until Tapia was pulled far enough wide to create a genuine angle.

Tapia and Coello wavered at the critical moments — at the end of the first set and through the second-set tie-break — while Galán and Chingotto maintained exceptional concentration and rhythm throughout.

Coello in the second set was sharper, more mobile, and it showed — but the pair's habitual capacity to accelerate in closing moments deserted them when it mattered.

The overall head-to-head now stands at 21-10 in Tapia and Coello's favour across their shared history, so Gijón remains an outlier rather than a trend reversal.

But the tactical blueprint — slow the game down, neutralise Coello's net game, exploit the backhand diagonal of whoever is stationed left — is now clearly documented.

Full match stats: Men's Gijón P2 final 2026

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