Three UTS hyper-specialists \u2013 Andrey Rublev, Alex de Minaur, Casper Ruud \u2013\u00a0and French indoor hard-court expert Ugo Humbert will vie for the 2025 UTS champion title on Sunday at the Copper Box Arena in London. Eight intense matches on Super Saturday determined their qualification for the Final Four.<\/p>\n
The two only double UTS champions in history, Rublev and De Minaur, claimed the top two spots in Group A, eliminating Tomas Machac (1 win) and Adrian Mannarino (3 losses) from the race.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Ugo Humbert and Casper Ruud required the point average to separate themselves for the top two positions in Group B after two wins, same total as their follower, Francisco Cer\u00fandolo from Argentina, who managed to get two wins also but was outlasted by the quarter average<\/p>\n
All results and standings here<\/a> Francisco Cer\u00fandolo, the winner of the Asian stage in Hong Kong last October, came closest to a semi-final spot. He arrived in London with a 3-0 record, which improved to 4-0 on Friday after defeating Ruud in Sudden Death.<\/p>\n However, his early Saturday loss to Humbert (3\u20131 : 16\u201310, 14\u201312, 11\u201318, 16\u20139) shifted the advantage entirely to the Frenchman and Casper Ruud. The Norwegian, winner of the season\u2019s clay stage in N\u00eemes, seized his opportunity by winning his final match in Sudden Death (3\u20132 : 13\u201312, 8\u201316, 8\u201315, 14\u201312, 2\u20130), thereby eliminating Cer\u00fandolo, his earlier conqueror, in the process.<\/p>\n Cerundolo\u2019s commanding victory against Goffin earlier did not yield the outcome he needed (3\u20130: 19\u20138, 15\u201312, 18\u20137).<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s stressful at times but I\u2019ve played the format a few times now so I\u2019m beginning to kind of manage it better,\u201d Ruud said. \u201cTwo years ago I also reached the semi-final and I lost to Jack Draper and hopefully this year I can go one step further.\u201d<\/p>\n Rublev and de Minaur, the specialists<\/p>\n Humbert, the group leader, expressed his relief at avoiding a heavy loss to Ruud, similar to their ATP Tour encounter two months prior in Stockholm. \u201cI\u2019m super happy with the quality of the match against Casper, despite the loss,\u201d he said. \u201cI played a mega, mega solid third quarter, and then\u2026 I\u2019m happy to be qualified for the semi-finals. I played three super matches.\u201d<\/p>\n Andrey Rublev was the only player to qualify with a clean sheet. The Russian finished his Group A journey undefeated, despite a contrasting day. He first defeated the defending champion and top seed, Alex de Minaur (3\u20131 : 13\u201312, 8\u201318, 16\u201312, 13\u201312), in a rematch of the 2024 Oslo stage final. He won again, by a small margin, after a very high-profile match, labelled as possibly his best ever at UTS.<\/p>\n Rublev then had to recover from a 2-0 deficit against Adrian Mannarino (3\u20132: 12\u201317, 11\u201313, 18\u201311, 18\u201312, 2\u20130), finally prevailing in Sudden Death. He showed signs of tiredness and nervousness due to the high pace of UTS rules. Rublev commented: \u201cI was kind of not in a perfect mood to fight, being qualified, while Adrian was playing unbelievably, shooting really hard, and not missing much in the first quarters.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBecause I didn\u2019t expect that level, I couldn\u2019t raise my game and he played better than me, but later on I was able to reset and play better. I was lucky in Sudden Death, playing unbelievably on the first point and lucky that Adrian framed it.\u201d<\/p>\n De Minaur did a clinical job at the end of the day, defeating and eliminating Tomas Machac (3\u20131 : 10\u201315, 16\u201311, 16\u201313, 16\u201312), winner of Guadalajara 2025, to secure his semi-final ticket. \u201cThis last match was probably the best one I played in the round robin,\u201d said the Australian. \u201cIt was an important one because it was do or die, and I\u2019m very happy with the level today to get to the semifinals tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n Unpredictable semifinals with UTS history on the line<\/p>\n The recent ATP Finals semi-finalist will meet Humbert in the first semi-final on Sunday, in a rematch of their N\u00eemes quarter-final earlier this year. Humbert is the only player in the Last Four who has not yet won a Zeus trophy in career, having been stopped by Ben Shelton in Frankfurt 2024\u2019s final.<\/p>\n But his current form certainly gives him serious hope of changing that. \u201cHe\u2019s one of the best players in the world on this surface,\u201d Cer\u00fandolo stated.<\/p>\n Rublev, who has reached the Final Four three times in three attempts this season (following N\u00eemes and Hong Kong), will try to break his losing streak at this stage against Casper Ruud, in a rematch of their round robin clash in the 2023 London Grand Final. The winner of Frankfurt 2023 and Oslo 2024 had won three quarters to one.<\/p>\n A piece of young UTS history will be played out on the Copper Box Arena Rebound Ace court, as Rublev and De Minaur could meet for a third career Zeus trophy, which has never happened before. De Minaur is also fighting to become the first man to defend his UTS champion crown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three UTS hyper-specialists \u2013 Andrey Rublev, Alex de Minaur, Casper Ruud \u2013\u00a0and French indoor hard-court expert Ugo Humbert…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-332515","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332515","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=332515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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