Karen Khachanov is waiting for help from Novak Djokovic – Sport – Kommersant

In the 1/8 finals of the Rolex Paris Masters, a tournament of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) in the Masters 1000 category with a prize fund of €6 million, Karen Khachanov lost in two games to last year’s winner Novak Djokovic. Despite this failure, the Russian still has a chance to finish the season in the top twenty, which he lost last year. This requires Djokovic to beat Khachanov’s closest pursuer, Italian Lorenzo Musetti, in the quarter-finals.

The Paris Masters is the last tournament of the ATP calendar season, and it is based on its results that the final ranking of players outside the top ten and not getting to Turin at the Nitto ATP Finals is determined. Tennis players, who have nothing to lose at the end of the year, sometimes, against the background of fatigue, treat this competition quite indifferently, realizing that globally it will not change anything for them. However, this week Karen Khachanov found himself in a different situation. He needed to defend a prestigious place in the top twenty of the annual ranking, which he lost for the first time since 2018 last season.

In fact, after Khachanov’s breakthrough at the US Open, where he performed very well and reached the semi-finals of the Grand Slam tournament for the first time, it seemed that a position in the top 20 was almost guaranteed to him. However, having become the 18th racket of the world, he first reached the quarterfinals in Astana, and then clearly lacked ranking points in Antwerp and Vienna. As a result, the Russian was ahead of the American Francis Tiafoe and the Dane Holger Rune, who, by the way, today in the third round of the Paris competition beat Andrey Rublev, who had already guaranteed himself participation in the final tournament – 6:4, 7:5. Moreover, in terms of points scored this year, the Italian Lorenzo Musetti came close to Khachanov, who, in turn, defeated the fourth racket of the world Norwegian Kasper Ruud at the same stage.

To repel this onslaught of Musetti, the Russian first needed to solve a very serious task – to pass Novak Djokovic himself, last year, and a total of six-time Rolex Paris Masters champion. In fact, Khachanov has already succeeded once, and just in Paris, where in 2018 the Russian won his most striking victory, beating the famous Serb in the final. However, in seven other personal meetings, including the last one played in the quarterfinals of the Astana Open in early October, Djokovic prevailed, for whom Khachanov’s style of play is, in principle, quite convenient.

So this time, the Serb immediately took the lead, then allowed the Russian to win back the serve, but turned out to be more accurate in the end of the first game, and in the second he completely dictated his conditions.

As a result, Khachanov, who at times acted very beautifully, but in general was not stable enough and sinned too much with unforced errors, was defeated in 1 hour and 27 minutes – 4:6, 1:6. Nevertheless, he has a chance to stay in the top twenty. To do this, firstly, Djokovic must beat Musetti in the quarterfinals, and secondly, the American Tommy Paul should not become the champion in Paris. In principle, the observance of both of these conditions is quite realistic, because the Serb leads the Italian in personal meetings – 2: 0, and Paul, although he beat Rafael Nadal himself in the second round, takes only 31st place in the world ranking and goes further in Masters 1000 tournaments never made it to the quarter-finals.

Evgeny Fedyakov