By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Thursday March 18, 2021
Andrey Rublev’s tremendous run of consecutive victories at ATP-500 matches shows no sign of abating. The Russian powered past Marton Fucsovics, 7-5, 6-2 on Thursday at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships to set a semifinal with fellow Russian Aslan Karatsev.
Karatsev defeated Jannik Sinner in three sets on Thursday, 6-7(5), 6-3, 6-2.
“It’s going to be interesting,” Rublev said of the upcoming challenge. “Aslan is playing really well now, he’s full of confidence. He has nothing to lose tomorrow and it’s going to be a great challenge for me—I want to see just in general this battle. I’m really looking forward to it.”
Karatsev is 9-2 in 2021 at ATP level. Famously, he became the first player in ATP history to reach the semifinals of a major on his Grand Slam debut in Australia, where he was also the first ATp qualifier to reach the semifinals of a major since 2000. He has risen from 112 to 42 in the rankings, and will crack the Top 40 next week.
Interestingly, Rublev and Karatsev won the doubles title together in Doha last week.
Chasing Federer, and running hot
ATP 500-level events have been around since 2009, and in that time only one player has had a longer winning streak at such events. That would be Roger Federer, who won 28 consecutive matches at 500-level events from Dubai in 2014 to Halle in 2016 (loss in quarter-final).
Rublev has racked up tournament wins at Hamburg, Vienna, St. Petersburg (all in 2020), as well as Rotterdam in 2021. He's added three more wins this week in Dubai.
He has lost just five sets in those 23 matches.
“Of course I’m happy,” said Rublev. “What can I say? I’m just happy to be in one more semifinal, I’m happy that I’m winning big matches, I’m happy that I’m playing consistent tennis, I’m happy that I’m showing a consistent level of my game—we’ll see if I can keep it for a while, and we’ll see if I can keep improving.”
On Thursday he doubled up on Fucsovics, after defeating the Hungarian in straight sets in the Rotterdam final earlier this month.
"I hope I don't play you anymore this year," Fucsovics told Rublev as he walked past his chair after the match.
The other semi: Shapovalov v Harris
The semifinals are set in Dubai and Lloyd Harris, fresh off his first Top 10 win over Dominic Thiem, will join the party and face Denis Shapovalov in the top half semifinal. Harris took out Kei Nishikori 6-1, 3-6, 6-3.
"It was a match of lots of ups and downs," Harris said. "First set I think Kei was missing quite a bit, I was serving really well. All of a sudden out of nowhere he started reading my serve pretty good and started making a lot more balls and I didn't really have a good rhythm, so second set went fairly easy for him and towards the end of the second set I just started to find a little bit more range and we had a few tight games there early in the third set where I also found a little more rhythm and I used that to get the break in that third set."
Shapovalov has been cruising in Dubai. The Canadian likes the conditions and it shows. He defeated Jeremy Chardy 7-5, 6-4 and has yet to drop a set all week.
"I have definitely focused on my serve a lot the last couple of weeks," Shapovalov said. "In practice and just putting a lot of time into it, placing it, trying different serves out, and trying to make it have more variation, so I'm definitely very happy with the way I'm serving - hopefully I can continue that."
The World No.12 knows he’ll be in for a big challenge against an in-form Harris, even though 69 spots separate them in the rankings.
"Lloyd I've been able to practice with him in Dubai, actually a week and a half ago," Shapovalov said. "He's another up and coming player, and he should definitely be ranked higher than he is right now, he's very tough, he's got a great serve, great forehand, he likes to play big and go for it."