Tenth seed Andrey Rublev reached the US Open 3rd round with a straight-sets win over Gregoire Barrere. After an impressive straight-sets win over Jeremy Chardy in the first round, he came out all guns blazing against Barrere. The Russian looks very confident so far in his pursuit of a second Grand Slam quarter-final as he beat the Frenchman with a scoreline of 6-2 6-4 7-6.

Rublev has identified the US tennis series as a place where he tends to play his best tennis. Last year, he beat the great Roger Federer in an hour at the Western and Southern Open before making it to the Round of 16 at the US Open. This year, it feels like that he may improve upon his result of the previous year as he is yet to drop a set in this tournament.

The Russian now improves to a 17-4 win-loss record for the season. His title wins in Doha and Adelaide is integral to his sensational season so far. Impressively, he has never lost a match this year after winning the first set (16-0).

Barrere showed signs why he has broken into the top 100 for the first time
Barrere showed signs why he has broken into the top 100 for the first time (Photo: Dsevad Mesic)

  • Match Breakdown

Rublev was very influential on his serve as he hit 13 aces and won an incredible 81% points on his first serve. His first serve stats were critical in him steamrolling through the first set.

In the second set, the Russian was able to take advantage of a very fragile Barrere second serve as he converted a breakpoint to lead initially. Barrere was able to break back thanks to some of his own impressive returning to make it 2-2.

However, the Frenchman was unable to impose any pressure on his serve. Barrere was only able to win 47% of his second serve points as the opportunities came continuously for the Russian as he was able to break the Barrere serve again. Rublev did not make any mistakes after breaking for the second time in the set as he closed out the second set 6-4.

In the third set, Barrere became gutsy and hung in there. Even though he got broken in the third game to love, he broke Rublev's serve deep into the third set before eventually succumbing to the Russian 7-4 in the tiebreak. 

Rublev hit an incredible 36 winners, committed only 23 unforced errors, and broke Barrere's serve 5 times out of the 6 break point chances he had. Furthermore, he saved 5 out of the 7 breakpoints.

Rublev will play either Ernesto Escobedo or Salvatore Caruso in the third round.