Sebastian Korda is on fire at the 2024 Dubai Championships, so let's see whether Andrey Rublev has a fire extinguisher on hand.
Nobody played better tennis in Dubai so far than Korda. He overpowered Pavel Kotov in the opening round 6-0, 6-2, overcoming a near hit to his head in that matchup. He followed up that performance by thrashing Botic van de Zandscjulp 6-1, 6-0 and is now looking to take on Rublev.
The Russian hasn't been that impressive in Dubai, but he won both of his matches to find himself in this match, so he's doing some things right. It's a fascinating matchup on paper, so let's take a look at how it unfolded so far and what might happen in this fourth showdown between the two.
Korda and Rublev played three times so far and the Russian beat him all three times. None of the matches were particularly close as all were straight sets wins. Korda is yet to win a set against Rublev, but he came close at this year's Australian Open.
They played in the third round, and Rublev won it in straight sets; however, Korda took him to the tiebreak in the second one.
The matchup is an interesting one because they are somewhat similar play. Both have tremendous weapons and love to bomb away from the baseline.
Korda is unplayable when he plays the way he has this week, so it will be interesting to see whether Rublev can find something to stop him. He's generally beaten him by being more consistent from the baseline.
The American is notoriously streaky, so we'll see how long this hot streak lasts. The serve could favor Korda a bit more if he has his day, but Rublev will certainly make it tough. I think this will be the moment for Korda—his first win over the Russian.
Prediction: Sebastian Korda to win in two sets.