Russia’s Karen Khachanov on Sunday capped an impressive year with the “biggest achievement” of his career as he stunned Novak Djokovic 7-5, 6-4 in the Paris Masters final.
Khachanov became the third different first-time winner of a Masters tournament this season — joining Juan Martin del Potro and John Isner — and rose to a career-high ranking of 11th.
He denied Djokovic a fourth consecutive title ahead of his return to world No. 1 and avenged a straight-sets loss to the Serb at Wimbledon in July.
Photo: Reuters
“It’s one of my biggest titles so far, biggest achievement, and in general it’s a breakthrough season, and this title, it’s a good year-end, and maybe I’m not crying, but still I’m really happy,” said Khachanov, who also won the Kremlin Cup in Moscow last month. “To finish the season like this is really a dream come true.”
Going into the Paris final, Khachanov had won just three of his 19 matches against players in the top 10, but he claimed a fourth such scalp in a week after snapping Djokovic’s 22-match winning run.
He could yet take part at the ATP Tour Finals in London after earning a spot as the second alternate for the season-ending event.
“I’m happy with the way I’m playing. I mean, match by match I was increasing my level,” the 22-year-old said. “I think that’s what I showed against all the top-10 guys. I mean, today was Novak, the one who is No. 1 in the world. That’s the first thing. The second thing is after some tough loses against top guys like Rafa [Nadal] in New York, I think they push me to the limit and even to work more harder, and I saw that my level is there. I could play and compete on this level. So it was a matter of just a few points.”
“Karen played really well and he deserved to win that match,” said Djokovic, who admitted he had struggled to fully recover after his grueling showdown with Roger Federer less than 24 hours earlier. “I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about how well he [Khachanov] played all week. All the credit to him. He deserves it. He’s a young player up and coming, but already established player, top player, and he showed great quality today, and he showed why we’re going to see a lot of him in the future.”
Khachanov is the first Russian to win a Masters title since Nikolay Davydenko in 2009.
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