Two Australians were beaten at his silky hands - but Lorenzo Musetti's big Queen's Club week has finally been ended by Tommy Paul, who joins the star-studded list of American champions at the prestigious grass-court event.
Musetti, the elegant Italian star who had accounted for Australia's top pair Alex de Minaur and Jordan Thompson during the week, met his match in Sunday's final in London, beaten 6-1 7-6 (10-8) by one of the rising battalion of US players.
Paul, enjoying the biggest triumph of his career at 27 to move into the American men's No.1 spot next week, is the first US player since Sam Querrey in 2010 to lift the second biggest grass-court title.
He also joins an illustrious cast of his compatriots, headed by John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors and Pete Sampras, to become Queen's champion.
All three of them went on to win grand slam titles just a couple of weeks after Queen's successes, with Paul feeling just as buoyed as he admitted: "This is the perfect way to go to Wimbledon."
The New Jersey-born, North Carolina-raised Paul, who'll now leapfrog compatriot Taylor Fritz to become No.12 in the world, made Musetti pay for a careless first set in which the 22-year-old was undone by a series of unforced errors.
But the man who came from a set down to beat de Minaur at the start of the week again proved a different proposition in the second set, breaking back with Paul serving for the match at 5-4 and then taking the stanza into a tiebreak.
He saved two match points and carved out a set point of his own, but Paul hung tough, as he had done against his compatriot Sebastian Korda in the semi-finals, to take the victory in just under an hour and a half.
Paul, who knocked out Britain's Jack Draper in the quarter-finals, said: "It means everything.
"Going through the hallways here in the locker room and the names on the wall, it's unbelievable. It was my goal always to put my name next to them."
Musetti, who's had a few on-court struggles in the year when he's also become a dad for the first time, beamed: "This was definitely one of the nicest weeks of my career so far.
"I want to dedicate this week to my little boy Ludovico. I just want to go back and hug him."
