Nick Kyrgios suffered a defeat in his first singles match in a year and a half after falling short to Andrey Rublev at the World Tennis World.
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On Friday, the Australian made a winning comeback in Abu Dhabi after he and Jasmine Paolini won their mixed doubles match against Denis Shapovalov and Caroline Garcia 7-5.
Then, he stayed on the court for the deciding match of the Team Kites and Team Falcons tie. But unfortunately, he failed to also register victory in singles as Rublev earned a 6-4 win to also seal a 24-21 triumph for the Falcons over the Kites.
During the match, Kyrgios looked a bit rusty in some of his shots - while he managed to win 70 percent of his first serve point, he also had just two aces - which is not really his usual ace stat through a set.
For the former world No. 13, it was his first singles match since he was beaten by Wu Yibing in the 2023 Stuttgart first round in 2023 June.
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On the other side, Rublev served exceptionally - he fired four aces and won 73 percent of his first serve points.
How Rublev saw off Kyrgiosat the World Tennis League?
The third game of the match went to deuce - and at the Tennis World League - there is no advantage but a deciding point proceeds when the score is 40/40.
And the Russian tennis star stepped up to win the point and go 2-1 up.
In the next six games, not a single break point was seen as Rublev led 5-4.
With the world No. 8 serving for the match, Kyrgios managed to earn his first two break points. Unfortunately for the Australian, he didn't convert the first and also missed out on his second break point which came on a deciding point.
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The 29-year-old may have lost to the Russian but it was still a solid return since he was at least able to triumph in mixed doubles.
