Hurkacz serves Korda off court, Rublev survives at Shanghai Masters

If Hubert Hurkacz’s serve is on then he is trouble for any player he faces. Unfortunately for American Sebastian Korda, the Pole’s serve was electric on Saturday at the Shanghai Masters and Hurkacz basically served Korda off the court. The problem is when a player is serving as well as Hurkacz there is little the other player can do except try to hold their own serve, but twice Korda lost serve and the match was ultimately decided by that.

Hurkacz finished with 14 aces, no double-faults, landed an excellent 75 percent of his first serves, and won an astonishing 85 percent of the first serves he did land. In fact, Hurkacz’s first serve was so dominant that he only won 38 percent of his second serves didn’t matter. And Korda wasn’t playing poorly, but he just got overpowered.

Hurkacz never faced a break-point and he broke Korda once in each set in the 6-3 6-4 victory. So far in the tournament, Hurkacz has 77 aces, the most of any player. With the victory, Hurkacz now moves on to the Shanghai Masters final with a chance to win his seventh ATP-level tournament. He also reached his third 1000-level final and could win his second of those.

Hurkacz and Rublev to meet in Shanghai Masters final

If Hurkacz does win the final, he will move to number 11 in the ATP rankings. Either way, he’s moved up to 13 in the rankings. His career high is number 9.

In the other semifinal, Andrey Rublev and Grigor Dimitrov played a brilliant first set that ended with Rublev taking the tie-break 8-6. Rublev was extremely frustrated at times by his unforced errors but he somehow kept his calm and composure well enough to win the back-and-forth first set.

In the second set, Dimitrov just seemed to run out of gas and Rublev finished the match strong. Rublev won the match 7-6(6) 6-3. Now the Russian will play the big serving Hurkacz in a Shanghai Masters final that should be extremely entertaining.