From World No. 111 to 24: the remarkable rise of Aslan Karatsev

Since his shock success at the Australian Open, the Israeli-Russian has shot up the rankings; now he has a kind draw at Wimbledon - could he make another run?

WHEN ASLAN KARATSEV made his sensational run to the semi-finals of the Australian Open earlier this year, his former junior coach predicted that he could make the Top 30 in the world.

“I think he will be in the top 30 or 40 and get results on most surfaces. It doesn’t mean he will make semis in every event, but he will be up there,” Oded Jacob, who coached the Israeli-Russian tennis player Karatsev in Israel’s junior national team, told The Jewish Independent.

That interview was in February, when Karatsev, 27, and ranked 111 in the world, became the first qualifier to make the semi-finals of a Grand Slam in the Open Era, with a heavy, flat forehand and unerring backhand overpowering a string of more fancied rivals before he fell to the eventual champion Novak Djokovic.

Just four months after announcing himself on the world stage, Karatsev has made mincemeat of his coach’s prediction. He is now ranked 24 in the world as steps out tonight for his first-round match of Wimbledon, where late withdrawals of top players have seen him seeded 20 for the world’s most prestigious tennis championship.

To say that Karatsev, now based in Belarus, has blossomed since the Australian Open is a massive understatement. He has a 23-10 win-loss record in 2021, having won his first tournament, in Dubai in March, where he beat world number 8 Andrey Rublev in the semi-final.

“I am really happy with my performance and [I am] really happy with my game,” he said after lifting the trophy. “At the beginning of the year, [I was happy] to play an Australian Open semi-final [and] to show a great level. After the Australian Open, I kept going, practising hard.”