BERLIN, May 23. /TASS/. Russian tennis star Andrey Rublev advanced to the final of the 2025 Hamburg Open on Friday after defeating Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime in straight sets.
In a match that lasted one hour and 25 minutes, the 3rd-seeded Rublev, who is playing under a neutral status at the tournament, breezed past the 6th-seeded Auger-Aliassime 6-1; 6-4.
“It was my best match of the week, for sure,” the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) quoted Rublev as saying after the semifinal match in Germany.
“I think I’m playing better match by match. It helped me that Felix [Auger-Aliassime] played a really tough match against [French Alexandre] Muller last night, it finished quite late. It also gave me a bit of an advantage,” Rublev noted.
The Russian will now play in the final against unseeded Flavio Cobolli from Italy, who earlier in the day took down Tomas Martin Etcheverry from Argentina 2-6; 7-5; 6-4.
The tournament’s official website quoted Cobolli after his match against Etcheverry: “We fought a lot, spent a lot of energy on this court, but at the end there is only one winner.”
“I’m really happy and emotional, super excited to wake up for tomorrow’s final,” the 23-year-old Italian tennis player added.
Rublev, 27, is currently ranked 17th in the ATP Rankings list. He has won 17 career ATP singles tournament titles and four more in men’s doubles. Rublev has also appeared in numerous Grand Slam tournaments, albeit never advancing beyond the quarterfinals.
He took home the gold at the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo in mixed doubles (with teammate Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova) and also won the 2021 Davis Cup as part of the Russian national team.
The 2025 Hamburg Open is a clay-court tournament played at the the Rothenbaum Tennis Center, which features a stadium with a retractable roof, on May 18-24. France’s Arthur Fils is the tournament’s reigning champion.
Russian players’ neutral status at tennis tournaments
On February 28, 2022, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued recommendations to international sports federations to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from taking part in international tournaments, citing Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine as the reason.
Following the IOC’s recommendations in late February 2022, the majority of global sports federations decided to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from all international sports tournaments.
The International Tennis Federation (ITF) ruled on March 1, 2022 to suspend the membership of the Russian and Belarusian national tennis federations while also canceling all previously scheduled tennis tournaments in the two countries.
On March 14, 2022, the ITF also confirmed its prohibition on the Russian and Belarusian national tennis teams from taking part in the 2022 Davis Cup and 2022 Billie Jean King Cup.
However, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) allowed tennis players from Russia and Belarus to continue participating in WTA and ATP tournaments, but only under a neutral status.
