Andrey Rublev storms to 100th ATP 500 win of career with opening victory in Barcelona

Andrey Rublev has always been a top performer at ATP 500-level tournaments, even being nicknamed the ‘King of ATP 500s’ in the past—and on Monday, he reached a big milestone at that level.

The world No. 8 stormed to the 100th ATP 500 win of his career on Monday evening with a 6-1, 6-3 victory over Dutch qualifier Jesper de Jong in the first round of the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell.

Since the ATP 500 series was introduced in 2009, Rublev is the seventh player to record 100 career wins at that level, and just the second player born in 1990 or later to do it, after Alexander Zverev.

Zverev recorded his 103rd career win at an ATP 500-level event on Monday, with a 6-4, 6-1 victory over France’s Alexandre Muller in the first round of the BMW Open by Bitpanda over in Munich.

Both Zverev and Rublev were born in 1997, in April and October.

ATP 500 WIN LEADERS (since 2009):

• 121: Rafael Nadal [121-19]
• 116: David Ferrer [116-39]
• 111: Roger Federer [111-11]
• 103: Kei Nishikori [103-41]
• 103: Alexander Zverev [103-45]
• 102: Novak Djokovic [102-14]
• 100: Andrey Rublev [100-40]

Facing the No. 94-ranked De Jong, who just broke into the Top 100 for the first time two weeks ago, Rublev was never in trouble—he raced out to a 4-0, double-break lead in the first set, and though he gave one of the breaks back in the next game, he was never broken again en route to a comfortable 64-minute victory under the lights.

It was a welcome return to form for Rublev, who had lost four of his last five matches since winning his first title of the year in Doha.

“Today is the first match in a long time that I’ve felt really well,” he told ATPTour.com. “I played really aggressively from the beginning. I was really lucky that I was able to win in straight sets, because I have known him this year. For me, I was preparing for a really tough match.”

Things won’t get any easier for Rublev in the next round, as he’ll face the winner of the match between Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, who just made the semifinals in Monte Carlo, and three-time Grand Slam champion (and one-time Roland Garros champion) Stan Wawrinka.

Six of Rublev’s 17 career ATP titles have come at the ATP 500 level: Hamburg, St. Petersburg and Vienna in 2020, Rotterdam in 2021, Dubai in 2022 and, as mentioned above, Doha this year.

Between 2020 and 2021, he went on a 23-match winning streak at ATP 500 events, which was the second-longest winning streak at this level after Federer’s 28 in a row between 2014 and 2016.