Danish tennis player Holger Rune won the first Masters 1000 tournament of his career this Sunday by beating Serbian Novak Djokovic, who held the trophy, in the final of the Paris event in three sets.
Rune, 18th in the world ranking, began to lose against the seventh-ranked ATP leader and former leader of the ranking, but turned around and managed to prevail by partials of 3-6, 6-3 and 7-5. , after two hours and 34 minutes of confrontation.
At the age of 19, the Dane achieved the most important success of his career, having played the fourth final in the last four tournaments on the men’s circuit in which he participated: he won in Stockholm and lost in Sofia and Basel (Switzerland).
‘You are one of my favorite players, I have been watching you since I was a little boy’
Work until your idols become your rivals @holgerrune2003 #RolexParisMasters pic.twitter.com/a6tDbsRYKN
– Tennis TV (@TennisTV) November 6, 2022
A single break of serve was enough for Djokovic, one of the best practitioners in the history of the sport, to win the first set, but the Dane responded in the same way in the second half, deferring the decision to the third.
Djokovic started by prevailing on Rune’s serve in the third set and the Dane returned the break in the next game, breaking the opponent again to make it 6-5, which allowed him to serve to close out the match on the second match point. , after a long session of advantages for the Serbian.
At the moment of victory, Rune’s first words were for Djokovic, 35, 16 years older than the Danish prodigy: “You are one of my favorite players. I saw you play on TV when I was little,” said the new champion. of the Masters 1000 in Paris, which was born in 2003, the year in which ‘Djoko’ began his professional career.
Having won the first tournament of his career in Munich (Germany), Rune showed his class in Paris, where he knocked out five players from the world’s ‘top 10’: Hubert Hurkacz (10th), Andrey Rublev (9th), Carlos Alcaraz ( first, by default), Félix Auger-Aliassime (eighth) and Djokovic (seventh).
Source: TSF
