Casper Ruud once won the Bastad Open trophy in the past, but the Norwegian won’t be winning it this year as he was beaten by Thiago Monteiro in two sets.
Ruud has had some really good results at the ATP 250 tournament in Bastad. He won the event a couple of years ago and made the final last year, where Andrey Rublev bested him.
This year, though, didn’t go so well for him. His first match was in the doubles with Rafael Nadal, and they won, but the singles match he played wasn’t very good.
Earlier this year, Thiago Monteiro played incredible tennis across several surfaces. The Brazilian is seemingly back to that form, as he stunned Ruud in two sets, winning the match 6-3, 6-3.
It’s a very surprising result because Ruud is one of the best clay players in the world, and this event is preparation for the upcoming Olympics for him.
Still, he didn’t play a very good match overall because the Brazilian was crushing him. On his serve, Monteiro did well behind both the first and second. He didn’t allow too many chances to Ruud, who only had one break point in the entire match and didn’t use it.
Monteiro, meanwhile, had six break points on Ruud’s serve, and he used three of them. Nothing particularly went wrong in Ruud’s game, as he simply wasn’t good enough.
He served at a good level but simply got overwhelmed by the Brazilian, who blasted 32 winners in 18 games of play, and only two of those were aces. Ruud, meanwhile, had 19, which is good but certainly not up to par with Monteiro’s display.
The event does allow for some aggressive play, such as the one Monteiro demonstrated, and the Norwegian simply had no solution. Maybe things will go better later when he plays doubles with Nadal again.
