On Thursday, July 25, the quarter-final matches of the ATP-250 clay court tournament took place in the Croatian city of Umag. The top seed Andrei Rublev held his meeting. Before Umag, Rublev suffered four defeats in a row and, in order to “get his head together,” he spoke with two-time Grand Slam champion Marat Safin. It seems that this worked for Andrey. In the second round, the Russian, who was knocked out in the first round, defeated the Argentine Camilo Carabella 6:4, 7:5.
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However, in the quarter-finals, Rublev, who fell to ninth place in the ATP rankings, faced a much tougher opponent. Fabian Marozan, the 49th player in the world, has won four times over top ten players in just over a year. Marozan lost to Carlos Alcaraz, Casper Ruud, Holger Rune and Alex de Minaur. Therefore, Andrei had to take the match with the Hungarian very seriously.
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Rublev was already in trouble in the second game. Marozan took his serve and won the game with a return from the third break point. However, the Russian quickly regained his footing. In the third game, Andrei lost only one point on the reception and then equalized the score 2-2.
In the fifth game, Rublev again took over his opponent’s serve. The next games were in the hands of the server, but at 5:4 the Russian could not serve for the match. Andrey made mistakes and thanks to this Marozhan caught up with his opponent 5:5. In the eleventh game, the Hungarian served to love and in the twelfth he took advantage of the second set point on reception. Having lost the set, Rublev began to angrily hit his racket on the court. And there was a reason: Fabian almost doubled him in terms of winners: 17 to nine.
Andrey Rublev at Roland Garros 2024
Photo: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images
Rublev played the second match at a higher level. Hence the result: 6:3 in 31 minutes with two breaks. The victory in the set was predetermined by a greatly increased percentage of first serve hits: from 47% to 74% (well, six aces in addition to three in the first set). In the third game, Andrei took someone else’s serve, then controlled the game and in the ninth game, with the third set point, he finished the game: Marozhan double-faulted at the end.
In the third set, only Rublev had break points. Already in the second game he used the second opportunity to take his opponent’s serve. After that, Andrey confirmed the break and left no reason to doubt his own superiority. The eighth game, played by the Russian in the reception, was the last of the match: 5:7, 6:3, 6:2 in 1 hour and 56 minutes.
This is how Rublev reached the semi-finals of the Umag tournament. In this phase his opponent will be the Argentine Francisco Serundolo (4), who beat Lorenzo Sonego in the quarter-finals by 6:4, 2:6, 7:6.
And at a tough tournament in Atlanta (USA), Aslan Karatsev tried to reach the quarterfinals. In the previous match, in which Karatsev’s opponent was British qualifier Billy Harris, Aslan, like Rublev, broke the losing streak, winning 6:2, 6:2. However, Francis Tiafoe (3), who was bye in the first round, is, of course, on a different level. In personal meetings, Tiafoe led 2-1, and all previous head-to-head confrontations took place in 2023.
In the first set of the match, Karatsev was the first to get a break point. He could have gone 2-0 up with an early break, but missed his chance in the second game. Tiafoe then played his games clearly and a break in the fifth game was enough to win the match. Aslan could have given up the set in the ninth game, but then he won back both set points. However, this did not help him. In the tenth game, Francis served to win the match, converting the third set point (the fifth taking into account the previous game) – 6:4 in 45 minutes.
In the second game, Karatsev led the scoreboard throughout. He quickly took a 3-0 lead with a break, and could have led 4-0 with two breaks, but he missed a double break point in the fourth game. In the seventh game, Aslan risked losing his advantage, but escaped a break point, and in the ninth he served for the set – 6:3 in 41 minutes.
The fate of the third game was decided in the long fourth game. Karatsev fought hard, but failed to convert his game points, and Tiafoe took advantage of his second chance. This was enough for him to move ahead. In the ninth game, Francis equalized the match: 6:4, 3:6, 6:3 in 2 hours and 7 minutes. During the entire match, the American scored 18 aces, and the Russian served 14 times.
