Questioned at the dawn of this semi-final, after his qualification against Ugo Humbert, Casper Ruud recalled that he had never won in five confrontations against Novak Djokovic, and that he had not “nothing to lose”. He will now be able to change this statistic and add a victory to his tally against the world number 1. For this second semi-final of Monte-Carlo, Saturday April 13, the Norwegian won in a match in three sets (6-4, 1-6, 6-4). He will face Stefanos Tsitsipas in the final on Sunday, who beat Jannik Sinner on the other side of the table.
The Norwegian struck straight away, imposing his pace against a world No. 1 who was a bit messy in this first act and guilty of several unforced errors. As a result, the Serbian dropped the first set of his Monaco week, while Ruud pocketed, for his part, the very first set of his career against a member of the Top 3 (6-4).
But the world No. 1 does not fall easily, and he left his opponent no chance in a quick and controlled second set, thus restarting the match (1-6). Djokovic, very irregular, alternated between good and bad, notably with 32 unforced errors in the match. Trailing 3 games to 0 in the last set, returning to 4-4, he finally gave in on the last balls (6-4).
Casper Ruud had never reached the final of the Monaco tournament, his best result until then being a semi-final against Andrey Rublev in 2021. On Sunday, against Stefanos Tsitsipas, he will try to win the very first Masters 1000 of his career.