Turin. A Carlos Alcaraz, alien to the version of the tennis player who won two Grand Slam titles this year, succumbed on Monday 6-1, 7-5 to Casper Ruud in his first match of the ATP Finals.
It was Ruud’s first victory over Alcaraz in five professional matches, and the result jeopardizes the Spanish star’s chances of making it through the round-robin stage of the season-ending tournament that brings together the eight best players of the year.
Alcaraz won the French Open and Wimbledon this year to increase his total of Grand Slam titles to four. But he had just lost in the round of 16 of the Paris Masters and fell behind Alexander Zverev by falling to third place in the ranking this week.
Ruud reached the semi-finals and final in his first two appearances in the 2021 and 2022 editions of the masters event, respectively.
“I didn’t know what to expect. “I didn’t have many expectations,” commented the Norwegian. “I didn’t try to do my best until the last point. I had never beaten Alcaraz, so I’m happy to finally achieve it.”
Alcaraz gave up his serve when serving for the second set, with a 5-4 advantage. The Spanish Alcaraz dominated the line of winners 25-16 but committed 26 unforced errors compared to Ruud’s 10.
Ruud capitalized on all four of his break points, while Alcaraz only capitalized on one of six in that category.
Later, in the group of Alcaraz and Ruud, Zverev plays against Andrey Rublev.
The top two finishers from each group advance to the semifinals.
No. 1-ranked Jannik Sinner and Taylor Fritz beat Alex de Minaur and Daniil Medvedev, respectively, in the other group on Sunday.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘
fbq(‘init’, ‘133913093805922’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Contact’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Donate’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘FindLocation’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Lead’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Search’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘Subscribe’, {value: ‘0.00’, currency: ‘MXN’, predicted_ltv: ‘0.00’});
fbq(‘track’, ‘ViewContent’);
#Alcaraz #beat #Ruud #debut #ATP #Finals
–
