Dubai in Russian

The title of the champion of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, a tournament of the Association of Tennis Professionals in the 500 category with a prize fund of $2.8 million, will be played by two of the strongest Russian players. This came to light after last year’s winner Andrey Rublev dealt with Alexander Zverev of Germany, and Daniil Medvedev also dealt with world No. 1 Novak Djokovic in two sets, breaking the Serbian’s 20-match unbeaten streak and extending his own to 13 meetings.

This year, both semi-final matches of the Dubai “500” by the names of their participants were worthy of the final. In the first, last year’s Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships champion Andrei Rublev and Alexander Zverev from Germany met, who, although he is now in the 16th place in the world ranking, without any doubt, remains an elite player even a few months after a severe ankle injury received in the semi-finals of last year’s Roland Garros, intends to return to the top ten. It was very difficult to name a favorite in this case. The rivals have known each other since childhood, they met more than once at junior competitions, but in five matches at the ATP level, Zverev invariably, and relatively easily, won.

However, in this case it turned out differently. And one of the main reasons for this was probably the gigantic reserve of confidence that Rublev received on Wednesday after defeating the Spaniard Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in the second round. The fact is that in that meeting, the Russian outright lost the first set, lost 1:6 in the tie-break of the second set, but managed to save five match points, and then pulled out the entire match in another tie-break. Zverev acted well, but failed to neutralize the main flaw in his game – the weakness of the second serve, on which the Russian won 12 points out of 17. As a result, everything ended with Rublev’s victory from the sixth match point – 6:3, 7:6 (11:9) for 1 hour 58 minutes. The first entry into the final this year will allow the Russian to score at least 300 rating points this week, which, given his unsuccessful performances over the previous two weeks, will be very useful.

The second semi-final match between Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev looked even more prestigious. Here, the current leader of the world ranking was opposed by a tennis player who was the first relatively recently. After an unconditional victory over the Serb in the 2021 US Open final, the Russian lost to Djokovic four times in a row, albeit, as a rule, in an equal fight. In addition, it should not be forgotten that Medvedev, who had already won two titles in Rotterdam and Doha in February, has been playing without a break for the third week and his fatigue is gradually accumulating.

If the Serb had managed to start a fight with mutual chances, Medvedev would probably have had a very difficult time, but it turned out that it was the day of the Russian. As you might expect, he mostly acted defensively, forcing the Serbian to attack at risk, and this tactic proved to be absolutely correct, as the world leader was too nervous and clearly lacked accuracy.

Having won blows right through six points less than Djokovic, the Russian made only 12 unforced errors against 38. In the first game, he led 5-2 with two breaks and allowed the Serb to win back only one of them, and in the second set the first game left for Medvedev on someone else’s supply. Having won in 1 hour 35 minutes – 6:4, 6:4, he interrupted Djokovic’s unbeaten streak of 20 matches and at the same time extended his own to 13 meetings. Thus, regardless of the result of the final match, the Russian tennis player will be the winner of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships for the third year. Recall that before Rublev in 2021, Aslan Karatsev excelled there.

Evgeny Fedyakov