Holger Rune
won
In the early hours of this Thursday, one of those matches that charges the confidence bar of any tennis player to the maximum.
He raised a
match point
in the second set against the American
Taylor Fritz
to finish celebrating with sets of 2-6, 7-6 and 6-3, and reach the quarterfinals of the
Indian Wells Masters 1000
for the first time in his career. career
of him.
He is expected by the Russian
Daniil Medvedev
.
The 20-year-old Dane, who has just been a semi-finalist at the ATP 500 in Acapulco with the return of
Patrick Mouratoglu
to his team, is one of the leaders of the new generation of young talents called to take over the
Big Three.
Since he won a Davis Cup match at the age of 14 in 2018,
his leap to the big tennis scene has been awaited with great expectation.
The previous year he had been a semi-finalist in singles and doubles (along with
Carlos Alcaraz)
of the prestigious Les Petits As and continued to rise to win six Challengers at the age of 18.
The last of them was in April 2022, in San Remo, and in October of that same year he lifted the Paris M1000 title against
Novak Djokovic.
And he jumped to the Top Ten.
His race took place at the speed of a Formula 1.
However, staying in that place is usually more difficult than getting there and doubts appeared.
He is now reacquainting himself with the best of his tennis in the California desert and hopes to deliver the blow against Medvedev, the world number 4.
Those doubts were logical for his age, by the way.
But the ambition of this 20-year-old, especially seeing the early success of Alcaraz himself and the recent consecration of
Jannik Sinner
in Australia, prevents him from seeing that there is a process to go through to achieve those great goals.
But he needs results.
And he needs them now.
This is why in the last six months five coaches have passed through his team:
Lars Christensen,
the one who accompanied him since he was six years old, Mouratoglou himself
, Boris Becker, Severin Luthi and Kenneth Carlsen.
He also changed his representation agency: it went from Tennium, the company that has owned the Argentina Open since 2017, to
IMG Tennis,
which carries out the career of Alcaraz and figures such as Medvedev, Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek.
As if 180° turns were the solution.
"
I'm obsessed with achieving success. This is about winning and nothing more
," he said for the
Netflix documentary series
Break Point .
There seems to be one of the keys.
Goals are becoming an obsession for Rune,
one of the tennis players with the best future projection
along with Alcaraz and Sinner, and they lead him to make hot decisions.
And there it is 🤩@holgerrune2003 saves a match point against Fritz to reach the QF in #TennisParadise!
pic.twitter.com/b5IL0u4MGc
— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) March 14, 2024
Rune and Alcaraz
were born a week apart, they went all the way together from Juniors to becoming professionals and they are united by that ambition that they make public in their statements.
However, in the way they approach tennis they are nothing alike.
While Carlitos accepted Sinner's first Grand Slam in Melbourne in a good way and took it as a motivation to go for more, Holger
confessed that it hurts him that his
Next Gen
teammates are taking so much advantage of him.
He was boiling inside when the Spaniard lifted the Wimbledon title last year, judging by the images shown by Netflix in this miniseries that gets into the intimacy of tennis players.
It's not that she had a personal problem with the Murcian, but that she wanted to be the one who was in that privileged place.
He can't stand it not being like that.
"He is ambitious and has an internal fire that is really powerful, but sometimes it is too much and it can turn against him. He loses himself mentally and when that happens he puts himself in danger,"
analyzed
Patrick Mouratoglou,
his old-new coach and who He worked with figures of the stature of the Williams sisters, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Coco Gauff.
Rune and Mouratoglou broke up in August 2023 and have now reunited.
He has an arrogant personality and a defiant attitude that led him, for example, to have an argument with
Stan Wawrinka
in the middle of the match at Paris Bercy.
"He is earning a reputation that he will regret one day,"
said the Swiss about the new
bad boy.
of the circuit, who on another occasion kicked his mother out of his
box
in the middle of a match in which things were not going well.
"My goal is to help him control his emotions so that they help him and do not harm him," Mouratoglou said in this regard.
He won a Masters 1000, remains firmly in the Top Ten and reached the quarterfinals of Roland Garros twice and once at Wimbledon at such a young age.
And he achieved it when he was barely 20 years old.
It's no small feat at all.
So
why not trust what got you there?
It is that self-destructive personality that prevents it.
Holger Rune and Carlos Alcaraz, teammates in their formation and now rivals.
"The people I hire have to help me. Sometimes I think: 'Why are you here' ?
I don't hire them just to sit in my
box
. The question is: 'Are you doing your job well?'
In the end, it's my fault, but I don't think Patrick is the best for me at the moment,"
he said in March 2023 and now Mouratoglou is back on his team.
What are we doing, Holger?
In this context, the intervention of Aneke, his mother and
former representative,
could be key.
She is spoken in the past tense because she is another of the people who left the Rune team.
With the move from Tennium to IMG she is no longer in charge of her son's press and communication management and she will appear sporadically in tournaments.
"The plan was for me to gradually step back when he could start to handle things on his own. And I think Holger has matured enormously,"
he told Danish outlet
BT
Changes and More Changes.
Mouratoglou's return, if he trusts his method beyond the results that come, could be the most favorable path to fulfill his destiny.
In Indian Wells, for the moment, he is achieving it.
The future, difficult to predict in his case, he will say.
Horacio Zeballos, to another final in doubles
Horacio Zeballos and Marcel Granollers celebrate in Indian Wells.
Photo: Matthew Stockman/Getty Images/AFP
Horacio Zeballos and the Spanish Marcel Granollers qualified for the doubles final in Indian Wells, which they will play this Friday against the winners of the duel that this morning the Germans Kravetz and Puetz were playing against the Dutchman Koolhof and the Croatian Mektic.
The man from Mar del Plata and the Catalan defeated the Italians Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori this Wednesday in the first semi-final by 6-4, 6-7 (7-9) and 10-8.
Thus, they took revenge on those who had defeated them in the final of the ATP 250 in Buenos Aires and in the debut at the ATP 500 in Rio de Janeiro.
Zeballos has 20 titles in his career in doubles, the last eight with Granollers.
He did not win a Grand Slam but he lifted six trophies in a Masters 1000, one of them in Indian Wells 2019 with Mektic.
This Thursday, in addition, the quarterfinals of the men's singles tournament will be played: Jiri Lehecka-Jannik Sinner, Tommy Paul (beat Luca Nardi 6-4 and 6-3, responsible for eliminating Novak Djokovic)-Casper Ruud (3 -6, 7-6 (7-3) and 6-4 to Gael Monfils), Alexander Zverev-Carlos Alcaraz and Daniil Medvedev (6-4 and 6-4 to Grigor Dimitrov)-Rune.