Casper Ruud is fighting for a spot at the ATP Finals in Turin, so losing early at the 2023 Swiss Indoors is not good news for him.
Outside of the Roland Garros final, Casper Ruud didn't really do much on the ATP Tour. He's been struggling for much of this year and continued to do so as we moved indoors. Japan Open was a pure disaster for Ruud, and it's not going any better since then.
He bested Alexander Bublik in the opening round of the Swiss Indoors as the Kazakhstani player dealt with fatigue from the previous week. He didn't best native rising star Dominic Stricker, who played a really great match in front of his fans who were backing him heavily during the entire matchup.
The loss is frankly another disaster for Ruud, who is still in the mix for Turin, mainly because his opponents are playing terrible tennis right now as well. That still doesn't absolve him of any blame for his bad performances, though; this one wasn't too terrible.
Yes, he didn't win, but he was facing a player who can be quite tough to beat in these conditions, and Stricker was playing on home soil. We saw earlier this year at the US Open how tricky he can be, and he certainly played pretty well today.
The Swiss talent totalled 13 aces, served pretty well, and handed Ruud an incredible 51 winners with only nine unforced errors. The serve is as impressive as it allowed him to blast plenty of winners, and Ruud could only watch.
He was pretty solid with 23 winners, but that was not enough to get it done. Ultimately, in the final set tiebreak, Stricker simply went for it, and it worked out for him. The final score was 6-4 3-6 7-6(1) as Stricker moved into the quarter-final.
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