Andrei Rublev was helped with Turin – Sport – Kommersant

At the Nitto ATP Finals, the final tournament of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), which will be held in Turin from November 13 to 20, two Russians will perform for the third year in a row. Following Daniil Medvedev, Andrei Rublev made his way there. This became clear after the Rolex Paris Masters, held in the capital of France, the Masters 1000 tournament with a prize fund of €6 million, one after another, two of his competitors dropped out of the fight at once – the Pole Hubert Hurkacz and the American Taylor Fritz.

The fact that Andrei Rublev has excellent chances to compete at the Nitto ATP Finals was known even before the start of the Paris Masters. And after a confident victory, which the Russian won in the 1/16 finals over the American John Isner on Tuesday, they have increased even more. Actually, only a fatal combination of circumstances could prevent Rublev. Firstly, he himself had to drop out of the fight before the semi-finals. And secondly, the American Taylor Fritz or the Pole Hubert Hurkach was supposed to become the champion.

Given the high level of participants in the Rolex Paris Masters, the fulfillment of the second condition looked extremely unlikely. However, it was hard to imagine that a ticket to Turin would be issued to Rublev so early – already on Wednesday.

Khurkach was the first of his pursuers to stumble. Having not been very confident in the autumn part of the season, the tenth number of the world rankings lost in the second round to the 19-year-old Dane Holger Rune, who recently took the famous French coach Patrick Mouratoglou, who has worked with many stars including Serena Williams, into his team. It seems that this move was successful. In any case, Rune has already held three finals in October – in Sofia, Stockholm and Basel, of which one, Swedish, won. Now he is in the top 18th place in the ranking, and in the match with Hurkach, who acted too tightly, he did not allow his opponent to earn a single break point and won – 7:5, 6:1.

Well, then Taylor Fritz could not stand the stress of the moment, who was tripped not by yesterday’s junior, but by 37-year-old French veteran Gilles Simon, who announced in advance his retirement at the end of this season. The Parisian public did not want to say goodbye to their compatriot so much that he had a second wind in the most difficult minutes of the third set. As a result, the owner of 14 ATP titles, who currently occupies only 188th place in the world classification, with the help of a rather soft, but tactically very restrained and competent game, broke Fritz’s resistance in more than three hours, defeating him with a score of 7:5, 5:7, 6:4. The American, however, will still go to Turin, but only as the first spare.

Thus, the line-up of the Nitto ATP Finals participants has been fully formed.

To six players – the Spaniards Carlos Alcaras and Rafael Nadal, the Norwegian Kasper Ruud, the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas, the Serbian Novak Djokovic and the Russian Daniil Medvedev, who won the tournament in Vienna last week (he lost to the Australian Alex De Minaur in the second round of the Rolex Paris Masters – 4: 6, 6:2, 5:7) were added Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime, whose unbeaten run over the past four weeks already includes 14 matches, and Andrei Rublev, who will play against Holger Rune in the 1/8 finals on Thursday.

Evgeny Fedyakov