two out men played a final in austria and one of them had to lose

via the ATP Tour results, with Tennis TourTalk, TennisTemple and Attitude.

One hour and twenty-one minutes. That is how long the first one took.

Mika Brunold beat João Lucas Reis da Silva 6-4, 6-3 on Sunday afternoon in Tulln, a town on the Danube about twenty miles outside Vienna, at an ATP Challenger called the NÖ Open. Both men were unseeded. Brunold had come the whole way through qualifying. It is his first Challenger title, and by the reckoning of the tennis press it is also the first final in men's professional tennis ever contested by two openly gay players.

the only two on tour

They are, for the moment, the only two out gay men on the men's circuit, which is what made the draw land the way it did on Saturday. Reis da Silva, from Brazil, came out in December 2024 and became the first active male pro to do it. Brunold, Swiss and 21, followed at the end of November 2025, writing in an Instagram post: "That's why I feel it's time for me to open up and share with you that I'm gay." He was ranked 307 in the world that week. He arrived in Tulln at 410, out of the qualifying draw, and leaves with a trophy.

Two out of two of them made this final. In a sport with hundreds of men on tour, the entire out population reached the last match, which is either the most beautiful statistic of the year or an indictment of the other hundreds, depending on what kind of morning you are having.

what brunold actually said

Once it started it was a tennis match. Brunold, asked about his semifinal, had said only that he "was very well prepared and really tried to give everything and get the maximum out of every point." Nobody made a speech. Somebody had to lose. That is the part that took thirty years, and Jason Collins was 34 and had to use a magazine to get anywhere near it.