Rublev, Nadal's ogre, joins Godó

The Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell adds a new top ten to one of its most spectacular editions in which Rafa Nadal stands out, as usual. But the manacorí, already eliminated in the Monte Carlo tournament, will have tough competition next week on the arena of the Real Club Tenis de Barcelona. The Russian Andrey Rublev, number eight in the world and his executioner in Monte Carlo, closes the participation by using the last wild card who distributes the technical direction of the tournament and there are four of the best ten players on the circuit who will participate.

The Russian tennis player, who is also a RCTB-1899 player, this year already won the ATP 500 title in Rotterdam, in addition to the ATP Cup with Russia. In this way, the tournament organization has already distributed four 'wild cards' for the main draw. In addition to Rublev himself, there will also be Jaume Munar, Carlos Alcaraz and Lorenzo Musetti. This Saturday the draw will take place and the preliminary phase will be played.

At 23, Rublev is one of the most promising players on the circuit as attested by his eight titles to date. His style of play and his mentality have led him to play ten finals and be a quarter-finalist at Roland Garros, US Open and Australian Open. Precisely in 2017 he became the youngest player (19 years old) to reach the US Open quarterfinals since Andy Roddick did it in 2001.

Trained by Fernando Vicente, also a historic RCTB-1899 player, in 2020 he made the definitive explosion by winning five titles (Vienna, Saint Petersburg, Hamburg, Adelaide and Doha) that earned him to finish the season among the top ten in the world. As he has stated on more than one occasion, Rublev does not set limits and aspires to be the third player from his country to reach the world number one after Yevgueni Kafelnikov and Marat Safin. The candidates for the throne are Rublev (1996), Daniil Medvedev (1996) and Karen Khachanov (1996), who belong to a new golden generation called to be the great national hope of Russian sport..