Tennis player Andrei Rublev lost the final of the tournament in Shanghai to Pole Hurkacz

In the decisive match of the Rolex Shanghai Masters, an Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Masters 1000 tournament with a prize fund of $8.8 million, Russian Andrei Rublev lost to Hubert Hurkacz from Poland in a third-set tiebreaker. Despite this setback, overall the last week and a half has been successful for Rublev. He set a personal best with his sixth final since the start of the season, returned to his career-high fifth place in the world rankings and de facto secured his ticket to the Nitto ATP Finals, the final tournament of the year in Turin.

It’s always very disappointing to lose when you have a match point, especially in the final. And after the end of the magnificent meeting with Hubert Hurkacz, Andrei Rublev was painful to watch. Although, by and large, even such a self-critical tennis player as Rublev can hardly make serious claims against himself. After all, the Pole’s serve, who seems serious about returning to the top ten, is now again as dangerous as it was in 2021, when he first won a similar Masters 1000 tournament in Miami in fine style, and then took the last set clean in the Wimbledon quarterfinals in Roger Federer’s career.

Having completed nearly 900 aces since the beginning of January, Hurkacz ranks first in the APR by this indicator. And now in the first set he served like a robot. However, in the second game, Rublev established a technique with which he began to increasingly delay rallies, increasing the percentage of other people’s mistakes. It is not surprising that the third set was generally equal. The Pole had his first match point in the tenth game, but Rublev hit his ace in time. At that moment, the Russian was at the peak of nervous tension. Previously, he had taken out his frustration so aggressively on reporters who, in his opinion, were clicking their shutters too loudly that he even earned a reprimand from the chair umpire.

And then the tiebreaker began with the classic tennis swing. Leading 5:4, Rublev had two serves left, did not use this advantage, but still earned his only match point, which Hurkac, of course, returned with an ace. After this, the Pole took the lead. The Russian saved the second and third match points after the rallies, but the fourth turned out to be fatal. The next exchange of blows after Rublev’s second serve was left to Hurkac, who forced the Russian to make a mistake when executing his signature right hand.

As a result – 6:3, 3:6, 7:6 (10:8), and for such a score the match lasted very short – only 2 hours 3 minutes.

Rublev still could not fully cope with the first serve of Hurkacz, who made 21 aces, including four in the tiebreaker. By the way, this is not the first time this has happened. Approximately the same picture was observed in the final of the June grass tournament in Halle, where Rublev met with Alexander Bublik. Of course, now the Russian was much closer to victory, and that is why his failure was much more offensive. But even without repeating his April success in Monte Carlo, where Rublev managed to take the title for the first time at a Masters 1000 competition, overall he should be pleased with his performance in Shanghai.

There are several reasons for this. For the first time in his career, having played his sixth final in one season, Rublev, who won in addition to Monte Carlo also in Båstad, but lost in Dubai, Banja Luka and Halle, returned to his career-high fifth place in the world rankings. And confident victories over several difficult opponents, including the French Hugues Humbert in the quarterfinals and the Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov in the semifinals, should boost his confidence ahead of three European tournaments – in Vienna, Paris and Turin at the final Nitto ATP Finals, where the Russian in fact, he has already come after the Serbian Novak Djokovic, the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev and the Italian Jannik Sinner.

Hurkacz, with the help of his triumph, fully joined the fight for three vacant tickets to Turin.

Having scored 2775 points since the beginning of the year, he is in 11th place according to this indicator, behind the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas (3615), Alexander Zverev from Germany (3415), to a Dane Holger Rune (3010), American Taylor Fritz (2965) and Norwegian to Kasper Ruud (2795). In the coming days, these six will be busy at three ATP tournaments – in Tokyo, Antwerp and Stockholm, although, most likely, the final outcome of the fight between them will become clear only in Paris. And, given the current level of the Pole’s play, he does not at all look like an outsider in this company.

Evgeniy Fedyakov