Australian Open: Aslan Karatsev's astonishing breakthrough in debut Grand Slam

Aslan Karatsev was ranked 292 in the world at the beginning the 2020 season, not high enough to merit a presence at even the qualifiers of the Australian Open. A year later, the Russian has earned a spot in the semi-finals of the same Grand Slam and become the first man in the Open Era to enter the last-four stage on his Slam debut. Breakthroughs seldom get much bigger.

On Tuesday, the 27-year-old defeated 18th seed Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov 2-6, 6-4, 6-1, 6-2 in the quarter-finals, a third straight victory against a seeded player at Melbourne Park. Dimitrov might have been hampered with back spasms, but Karatsev has broken the back of a few other higher-ranked players in the last couple of weeks after qualifying to be at the biggest stage.

Karatsev is the fifth qualifier to make it to the semi-final of a Grand Slam in the Open Era, joining American John McEnroe, Aussie Bob Giltinan, Belgian Filip Dewulf and Belarusian Vladimir Voltchkov, the last player to do so at the 2000 Wimbledon. The current world No. 114 is the lowest-ranked man to reach a Slam semi-final since Goran Ivanisevic, ranked 125th, at the 2001 Wimbledon. He is also the first Russian man since Marat Safin in 2005 to reach the Australian Open singles semis, and with Daniil Medvedev facing Andrey Rublev in their quarter-finals on Wednesday, it ensures two Russians among the last four men standing.

Before the start of this Australian Open, Karatsev had won just three ATP tour level matches; he now has five wins in Melbourne alone. Before the start of this Australian Open, Karatsev had only once beaten a top-50 player; he has already beaten three (world No. 9 Diego Schwartzman, No. 19 Felix Auger-Aliassime and No. 21 Dimitrov) here.

Yet, he’s no one-tournament wonder. Karatsev was preparing to be on the fast lane when the world stopped due to the Covid-19-pandemic last year, playing a few exhibition matches after the tennis season was suspended in March. Once it resumed in August, he won 19 out of 21 matches on the ATP Challenger tour. After losing to three-time Grand Slam champion Stan Wawrinka in the final of the Prague Challenger, Karatsev bagged back-to-back titles in Prague and Ostrava to see his ranking jump to 112 at the end of the season.

That looked a distant possibility in 2017, when a knee injury sidelined the Russian for half a year and saw his ranking plummet in the region of 400 over the next couple of years. “From this moment it was really tough to get the confidence back and to feel the game,” Karatsev told ATP Tour.com.

Falling short in his nine previous attempts to qualify for a Grand Slam main draw, Karatsev got the job done at the 2021 Australian Open qualifiers in Doha last month. In the two-week Melbourne quarantine, he had India’s Sumit Nagal as his designated training partner, after which he represented his country at the ATP Cup. And although Karatsev lost all his three doubles matches in Russia’s title-winning march led by Medvedev and Rublev, Medvedev labelled him as the “secret weapon” of the team.

Karatsev’s own weapons are no longer a secret at the Australian Open—he blasted 50 winners against Schwartzman in the third round, 37 in his fourth-round win over Auger-Aliassime from two sets down and 34 against Dimitrov. According to the Australian Open website, Karatsev had the maximum average forehand and backhand speed in the tournament among the quarter-finalists.

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