Holger Rune returned to the courts at the 2024 Rotterdam Open, but he didn't do all that well, losing to Alexander Shevchenko in three sets.
New Kazakhstani player, Shevchenko scored a pretty significant win over Rune at the Rotterdam Open. The Dane endured a few interesting weeks on the ATP Tour recently mostly dealing with a lot of health issues. He first had to retire in Montpellier due to a hand injury only to return to tennis the following week for the Ultimate Tennis Showdown in Oslo.
He would cut his time in Oslo short because of an illness, which called into question how ready he would be for Rotterdam. Well, we don't know if it played a factor in today's loss because he had a pretty solid level overall; it just wasn't enough to overcome Shevchenko.
Rune played really well behind his first serve, losing only 5 points in the entire match, and it wasn't a short match. The problem was that he hit it only 60 % of the time, and he struggled when he didn’t.
Had he served more consistently, Shevchenko likely wouldn't have seen so many chances. After all, he was very good in converting his chances and winning almost 50 % of Rune's second serve points. On his own serve, Shevchenko did well enough.
He served a bit better than Rune and but the crucial part was being to win the crucial rallies. Rune missed out on two chances in the opening set which would bite him later on as he didn't see a single one in the final set.
The final one was a great performance from the Kazakhstani player who outlasted Rune from the baseline. Not being able to hit a single winner in the final set was simply not good enough to win the match. The final score was 6-4, 1-6, 6-3.
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