Andrey Rublev has led Falcons who initially finished narrowly top of the group stage at the World Tennis League to a title triumph in the pre-cursor to the 2025 season in the UAE.
A tournament which comprises some of the top names in the world of tennis teaming up for singles and doubles, it is both good practice and as Andreeva and Sabalenka in particular have shown this week, an endeavour full of hilarious and heartwarming moments.
But it wasn't the new found duo for Hawks who sealed the win. Andreeva and Sabalenka won their first match of the final seeing off Caroline Garcia and Elena Rybakina narrowly 7-6. The 17-year-old prodigy then saw off Elena Rybakina emphatically 6-2 in a superb win to really stake her claim.
But as is the case with this tournament, every point counts and in this case it did. Andrey Rublev hit back for Falcons as he has for most of the tournament. He teamed up with Denis Shapovalov in a winning effort 6-2 over Sumit Nagal to make the score 15-14 down.
Weirdly though, it wasn't Thompson who faced Rublev as was initially slated and was in fact Sumit Nagal who is a lower echelon ATP player and not really on Rublev's level.
As was proven by the fact that Rublev steamrollered him 6-1 to claim a 20-16 win after initially being 8-13 down. It is technically back to back World Tennis League titles for Rublev who won alongside Andreeva as well as Kenin and Medvedev last year so he continues to thrive in this format.
He now heads to Macau also to play over Christmas alongside Kei Nishikori, Jerry Shang, Karolina Muchova and Casper Ruud respectively so the grind firmly never stops for Rublev in this case winning a first title technically of the new season in the UAE.
The Falcons are the World Tennis League Champions.
— The Tennis Letter (@TheTennisLetter) December 22, 2024
Elena Rybakina.
Caroline Garcia.
Andrey Rublev.
Denis Shapovalov.
Team. ❤️
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