Oviri Kelvin, Sports Editor, Abuja
Auger-Aliassime lost his second Marseille final in the ATP tournament to Andrey Rublev who defeated the Canadian 7-5, 7-6, (7/4) to claim the Marseille title.
Unfortunately for Andrey Rublev in the previous week, who was on his way to clinching his ninth career title, conceded to a defeat by Auger-Aliassime in the semifinal in Rotterdam and this spurred the seventh-ranked world tennis player to take revenge in Marseille.
The game between the duo was highly dominated by the Russian Andrey Rublev who from available records has won five hard-court finals he has featured in. Nevertheless, the player for like a year has had a poor run. Auger-Aliassime was unable to win two sets in a row in Marseille.
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Recounting the poor run of the Russian tennis professional, he lost in three finals in Monte-Carlo, Cincinnati, and Halle after winning in Rotterdam in March last year.
During the game, the second-seeded Rublev in the 12th minute continued his break to take the set after he immediately broke back from the third-seeded Auger-Aliassime second break.
The Russian who failed to serve out in the second set of the match at 5-4, had to save a set point in his service game to force a tiebreak which in 117 minutes, Rublev won to claim the title.
The Russian, 24 years of age, was at 16:00 GMT due to return to the court to play the doubles final alongside Ukrainian Denys Molchanov against doubles specialists Raven Klaasen of South Africa and Ben McLachlan of Japan.
