Andrey Rublev produced an audacious display of attacking tennis to hand record 11-time champion Rafael Nadal a 6-2, 4-6, 6-2 defeat on clay in the Monte Carlo Masters quarterfinals on Friday. The sixth-seeded Russian might have won even more convincingly, with Nadal saving breakpoints at 3-1 down in the second set. Nadal fought back to take that set and seemed to have calmed down, but Rublev broke him right away in the decider, and the 34-year-old Nadal looked exhausted.
“When you face a great player like him and you don’t play well, you should lose,” Nadal said. “He played great, he played aggressive. Well done to him.”Rublev won his first match against third-seeded Nadal with a usually strong forehand winner on his first match point — a tool Nadal struggled to contain the entire match.“I don’t even know what to say. I cannot imagine being in the situation of Rafa, knowing that you are the best player on clay,” Rublev said. “I think for him it must be incredibly tough.”
Rublev's next opponent is unseeded Norwegian Casper Ruud, who defeated the 20-time Grand Slam champion on one of his clay strongholds. Ruud, who has just one career title compared to Nadal's 86, also defeated a former champion, defeating 2019 winner Fabio Fognini of Italy 6-4, 6-3.
“(Casper) is playing really well. I have known him a long time,” said Rublev, who is 3-0 against him overall. “He finished today much earlier. I will try to recover as best as I can.”
“I had problems with my serve. I don’t understand why, because I was not having problems in practice. But today was one of those days that my serve was a disaster,” Nadal said. “When you serve with no confidence, you are just focusing on trying to serve, not about how you want to hit the ball.”
To level the match, the 13-time French Open champion used his enormous physical resources to claw back, pushing Rublev into errors and breaking him in the tenth game. Rublev, on the other hand, demonstrated why he is such a rising star.
He reached the quarterfinals of the Australian Open after winning the ATP Cup with Russia and then won the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament in Rotterdam last month for his fourth title in seven months. Since Rotterdam, he's advanced to the semifinals in four consecutive tournaments, including Monte Carlo. Rublev outdid his opponent by edging a 35-shot rally in the next game, forcing Nadal to hunch over and rest his hands on his knees for the first time in the third set. Despite breaking back to 1-1, Nadal was scrapping beyond his means, and Rublev pulled away for one of his career's biggest victories.