Gael Monfils had some good moments in the Gulf over the course of his long career, but he failed to advance past teenage prodigy Jakub Mensik at the 2024 Qatar Open.
This week's Qatar Open has largely been dominated by headlines about the rising star, Jakub Mensik. Similarly to Joao Fonseca in Rio, the Czech player has been amazing this week, but today wasn't quite the same.
He did win the match, securing his maiden ATP Tour-level final, but it was a bit of a shakier match compared to the amazing performance against Andrey Rublev.
Monfils lost this match primarily because he ran out of steam. He pushed really hard at times because he needed to. Mensik was quite solid for much of this match, and ultimately, the veteran simply didn't have that little juice that he needed in the end.
Mensik took the opening set 6-4 largely behind pretty solid play as Monfils was struggling to find his best tennis. The veteran would respond strongly in the second set, taking an early 3-0 lead, after which things snowballed pretty quickly.
The 18-year-old player kind of lost focus as the set went on, and Monfils was able to win it 6-1. The final set was quite an interesting sequence. First, the teenager took an early lead, but Monfils responded immediately
After that, both battled really hard, but Monfils never quite found the level to separate himself much. As the match went on, he became slower and more tired, which Mensik was able to take advantage of.
He broke at the perfect time to take a 5-3 lead and then held comfortably with new balls to finish off the match. The final score was 6-4, 1-6, 6-3 for the Czech teenager, who will contest his maiden final tomorrow against Karen Khachanov.
Let's see whether he'll be able to finish off the perfect week with a perfect match.
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