Karatsev speaks on meteoric rise and plans moving forward

Aslan Karatsev has had an amazing start to the year and despite the Russian never doubting himself it came as a surprise to him as well.

The Russian has had a fairytale start to 2021 that saw him reach his first Grand Slam semifinal as well as win his first singles title in Dubai. Ahead of his Miami Open debut, he sat down with ATP to talk about things.

It all started at the Australian Open, where he had a dream run that might have never happened. He was a set down in the qualifiers and somehow pulled out a victory before enjoying a stroke of luck. Scheduled to be in the infamous COVID flight to Australia he recalled how he got lucky to get 'the other' flight:

"I got the 'healthy' flight- I was supposed to be on the covid [affected] flight but they made a mistake. There were a few players who were put onto the 5 am flight and that was the one without covid. I was lucky. Everything started from there.”

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The turning point came at the ATP Cup where he realized he could play with the big boys:

“Being part of ATP Cup gave me the confidence to play on a big stage. When the Australian Open started I was nervous in the first round, but after that, it became smoother. I felt the game, I felt the shots."

During this stretch, Karatsev established himself as one of the cleanest ball-strikers on the tour. About his game the Russian said:

“My game is to stay close to the baseline and dictate, be aggressive. If I hit winners, that's good, but it's not my focus."

His rise did not go unnoticed as Medvedev recently commented on it by saying he was in disbelief not knowing where it came from. He also said his Dubai run was good enough for the top 10.

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Not everything in his life went smoothly as he was forced to move from Israel where he was growing up to Russia due to limited sponsors. Even after finding a sponsor, he would not commit himself 100 % to tennis until he was 15. Asked about all of that he simply concluded by saying:

“Had you told me this I would not have believed it. You are just [kidding[ yourself. With success, you never know when it's coming, but I always believed I could make it. Yahor (his coach) kept telling me: ‘You have to be strong mentally, you have to build your body stronger. He was pushing me every day, saying I was better than the Challenger level.

He continued with:

“But [this success] didn’t come in one moment. We worked at it for 10 years, going back to the juniors. There have been a lot of ups and downs in the last three years. We have put in a lot of hard work.”