De Minaur falls to Rublev after his greatest fight

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De Minaur falls to Rublev after his greatest fight

Australia’s tennis battler supreme Alex de Minaur has delivered perhaps his greatest show of defiance on a tennis court at the Qatar Open, resistance so amazing it made his eventual conqueror Andrey Rublev joke he felt like punching him in exasperation.

De Minaur was the very model of indomitability, extraordinarily saving seven match points in three separate games and a deciding tiebreak against old foe Rublev before he eventually had to succumb 6-1 3-6 7-6 (10-8) to the volatile Russian in a quite epic quarter-final in Doha on Thursday.

Some 45 minutes after he saved his first match point at 5-2 down in the final set with the most spectacular of rallies, second-seeded de Minaur was still battling in his own uniquely tigerish fashion to save the day when he finally hit one backhand wide while trying to repel an eighth match point.

Rublev, who’d earlier been in racquet-chucking mood as he attempted to cope with his own failings and de Minaur’s never-say-die excellence, could only laugh wearily afterwards when quizzed about what it was like to face such epic resistance: “Whatever, I wanna punch him!”

The pair have habitually enjoyed some hard-fought clashes, with de Minaur doubtless unable to forget his agonising defeat in last year’s *********** Open but this was the closest of the lot as de Minaur himself managed to earn a match point in the tiebreak after all his heroics.

Eventually, though, after two hours 39 minutes of see-saw duelling, world No.10 Rublev was the one making it 4-4 in their head-to-head record as he seeks to regain the title he won in 2020.

Coming so close will be another heartbreaker for world No.8 de Minaur, who had been hoping to reach his second straight ATP 500 tournament final in the space of a fortnight after losing to Carlos Alcaraz in the Rotterdam Open.

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