Frances Tiafoe struggled to hide his frustrations after he was beaten by Jannik Sinner in the final of the Cincinnati Open. Tiafoe went down in straight sets, making Sinner work hard early on before tailing off as the match progresed.

The American took Sinner to a first-set tiebreak, showing plenty of heart but coming up short as his Italian rival drew first blood. From there, Tiafoe had no answer to Sinner’s baseline play with the latter taking control on his way to a 7-6 (7-4) 6-2 victory.

Tiafoe was clearly frustrated with his performance against Sinner but appeared to take his defeat in good spirits. While Sinner was having a photo taken with the trophy, he walked over and photobombed it by flashing his middle finger which prompted laughter all around.

In his post-match press conference, Tiafoe branded Sinner a ‘motherf****r’ who cannot lose as he reflected on what happened on the court.

Asked what makes Sinner so tough to play against, Tiafoe joked: “Ask everybody else on the tour! Motherf****r can’t lose. Underrated serve, I want to say. I had a really tough time, like, cleaning up and reading it and he aced me, I don’t know how many times he aced me.

“I started getting better at reading it in the second set but I came out with a bad start. Really good serve and he moves so well, he’s lanky. His average pace of ball is big and he has great depth. You feel like you’ve got to overplay to just match his medium and it’s tough.

“You find yourself overplaying a little bit. But yeah, that first set was kind of crucial. He had some good serves at one point and I played really defensively and missed a forehand. Other than that, there wasn’t much in it. Guys who are No 1 in the world won’t let you breathe after that.”

Sinner, meanwhile, admitted that he needed to dig deep and push through fatigue to beat Tiafoe in one hour and 37 minutes.

“It was a very difficult week, tough week,” he said. “I’m very happy about about today’s match. It was very tough mentally. Had such an amazing run here and I tried to do my best today.

“We both were quite tired from yesterday. We both felt a lot of tension but I’m very glad about the level I played today, especially in the important moments. Now, for sure, it’s important to recover to be ready for New York. This is our main goal here for this US swing.

“I’m very happy to be in a position where I am and just trying to keep going mentally, having this hunger to keep playing. Hopefully I can show some good tennis also in New York.”