ROME, November 13. /TASS/. Spanish tennis star Carlos Alcaraz took down Russia’s Andrey Rublev at the 2024 ATP Finals Tournament in Italy on Wednesday.

The Spaniard blew past his Russian opponent 6-3; 7-6 (10-8) in a match that lasted one hour and 37 minutes. This was Rublev’s second loss at the 2024 ATP Finals as he lost earlier in the week to Germany’s Andrey Zverev 4-6; 4-6 in the tournament’s opener.

"I surprised myself," the official ATP website quoted Alcaraz as saying after his win over Rublev. "The way that I played today from the baseline, with my serve. I was really calm."

"Once you step on the court, you have to forget everything, your struggles outside the court, and you try to put your focus on hitting a good forehand, a good backhand, and making good tactics against the opponent," he continued.

"I thought I did that pretty well, and surprised myself," the 21-year-old Spaniard added.

Russia’s Rublev, 27, competes at international tennis tournaments as a neutral athlete. He has 16 career ATP singles titles and four more in men’s doubles.

Rublev has seen mixed success on the Grand Slam circuit, having never advanced past the quarterfinals. In 2020, Rublev won the gold medal in mixed doubles at the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo (with teammate Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova) and was also part of the Russian team that won the Davis Cup in 2021.

This year’s 2024 ATP Finals are missing Serbian tennis legend Novak Djokovic, who announced last week that he would not participate in the year-end ATP showcase of the world’s top players.

The 2024 ATP Finals is a men’s tennis tournament held on indoor hard courts at the Inalpi Arena in Turin, Italy, from November 10 to 17, 2024. Every year, the tournament pits the world’s top eight male players against each other, according to the ATP Rankings.

This year’s ATP Finals’ Round Robin competition is made up of Group A: Jannik Sinner (Italy); Daniil Medvedev (Russian athlete playing under a neutral status at ATP tournaments), Taylor Fritz (the United States) and Alex de Minaur (Australia); while Group B lists Alexander Zverev (Germany), Carlos Alcaraz (Spain), Casper Ruud (Norway) and Andrey Rublev (Russian athlete playing under a neutral status at ATP tournaments).

Russian players’ neutral status at tennis tournaments

On February 28, 2022, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued recommendations to international sports federations to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from participating in international tournaments, citing Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine as the reason.

Following the IOC’s recommendations in late February 2022, most global sports federations decided to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from all international sports tournaments.

The International Tennis Federation (ITF) ruled on March 1, 2022, to suspend the membership of the Russian and Belarusian national tennis federations and also canceled all previously scheduled tennis tournaments in the two countries.

On March 14, 2022, the ITF also confirmed its prohibition on the Russian and Belarusian national tennis teams from participating in the 2022 Davis Cup and 2022 Billie Jean King Cup.

However, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) and the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) allowed players from Russia and Belarus to continue competing in WTA and ATP tournaments, but only under a neutral status.