{"id":234661,"date":"2025-10-23T09:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T09:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/234661\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T09:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T09:13:09","slug":"tennis-star-makes-damning-statement-as-rivals-fail-after-alcaraz-and-sinner-injuries-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/234661\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennis star makes damning statement as rivals ‘fail’ after Alcaraz and Sinner injuries | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexander Bublik<\/a> is known for speaking his mind, for better or worse. The Kazakh tennis star has been on the rise again this year, lifting four titles and reaching a career-high ranking of No. 16 in the world. But he believes that he and his rivals \u201cfailed\u201d at the recent Shanghai Masters.<\/p>\n

Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> and Jannik Sinner<\/a> were forced to withdraw from the tournament due to physical problems, and then-world No. 204 Valentin Vacherot went on to become the lowest-ranked champion in Masters 1000 history<\/a> in their absence.<\/p>\n

The Monegasque ace came through qualifying and then beat five players ranked in the world\u2019s top 35 – including Novak Djokovic<\/a> – on his way to the final. In the championship match, he faced his own cousin,<\/a> Frenchman Arthur Rinderknech, who had also caused plenty of upsets in the draw.<\/p>\n

Bublik was one of Vacherot\u2019s victims, losing to the qualifier in the second round. And he believes that Vacherot\u2019s triumph shows that all of the top players ranked below Alcaraz and Sinner simply failed to step up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess, if he\u2019s able to win a Masters then it\u2019s our fault. All of us,\u201d the world No. 16 told ATP Media.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe failed, we didn\u2019t get ready enough for the Masters. He cracked, I don\u2019t know how many top 20 players and two top 10. He won a Masters. And on the other side [of the draw] is Arthur, killing everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was plenty of opportunity in the Shanghai Masters draw. Alcaraz pulled out before the tournament started<\/a>, having picked up an ankle injury at the Japan Open a few days earlier.<\/p>\n

Sinner and Djokovic were together in the bottom half of the draw, and defending champion Sinner was forced to retire from his third-round match against Tallon Griekspoor after suffering severe cramps and struggling to walk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Other former Masters champions, like Alexander Zverev<\/a> and Daniil Medvedev<\/a>, lost to Rinderknech. And Bublik thought it came as a wake-up call.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cSo I guess that\u2019s the question. Why are we in Shanghai at the end of the season – half of us have won a lot of titles, half of us maybe won a couple of Slams or Masters – and we\u2019re not able to stop those two guys?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the question to us, I guess. The level once Carlos and Jannik are not there\u2026 This is what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

After suffering an early exit in Shanghai, Bublik is hoping to bounce back at this week\u2019s Vienna Open, where he\u2019s through to the last 16. Meanwhile, Vacherot was given a wildcard into the ATP 500 event in Basel.<\/p>\n

He received a brutal draw, facing world No. 4 Taylor Fritz<\/a> in the opening round, and suffered a close 4-6 7-6(4) 7-5 defeat on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexander Bublik is known for speaking his mind, for better or worse. The Kazakh tennis star has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[12374,64,63,962,754,48376,85,747,750,125801],"class_list":["post-234661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-alexander-bublik","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-carlos-alcaraz","tag-jannik-sinner","tag-shanghai-masters","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-news","tag-valentin-vacherot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}