By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Thursday May 4, 2023
Remember back to 2021, when Aslan Karatsev burst onto the scene at the Australian to become the first qualifier to reach the men’s singles semifinals at a Grand Slam since 2000? Then 27, Karatsev was making his Grand Slam debut at the time, and he became the first player to ever reach a men’s singles semifinal on his Grand Slam main draw debut.
His phone was blowing up at the time, after he engineered wins over Diego Schwartzman, Felix Auger-Aliassime and Grigor Dimitrov to reach the semifinals. Karatsev said he had over 200 Whatsapp messages after the match.
On Thursday in Madrid, his phone is likely blowing up again…
In a run that is eerily similar to his Australian Open breakout, former World No.14 Karatsev has powered through from qualifying to reach the semifinals, defeating three Top 30 players (including a round of 16 win over World No.3 Daniil Medvedev) and edging out China’s Zhang Zhizhen on Thursday to reach his maiden Masters 1000 semifinal.
Karatsev is the first men’s singles qualifier to reach the semifinals at Madrid since 2002 (Fabric Santoro). He will face either Jan-Lennard Struff or Stefanos Tsitsipas on Friday.
Karatsev entered the week at No.121, but is now on the cusp of the Top 50 in the live rankings thanks to an amazing run.
He has had to drop down to playing qualifying and challenger events of late, as his ranking has dipped to low to play main draw at ATP events. But it hasn’t discouraged him from doing the work and believing that his time would come again.
I think [I was ranked] 90-something beginning of the year and then I drop to 120-something,” he said. “I start to play already challenger. I lost everything in challenger.
“I think it's the hard work that every day you just keep practicing and keep believing with my coach, with my team. You never know when it's [gonna] happen. Same thing happened two years ago. You never know when, how to say, the push is coming. So you practice. You compete. Then someday you have success.”
Though he’s been through some difficult times but the experience he gained from his success in 2021 is still helping him in terms of self-belief.
“I think now… that experience that I get from past two years, I think I have it more now,” he said. “Now it's more calm, so you stay a bit focused on the things that you have to do.”