ATP Tour

Medvedev into Almaty final after Bublik retirement, faces Basilashvili for trophy

Daniil Medvedev remains on track to for a successful title defence at the Almaty Open after Alexander Bublik retired from the pair’s semi-final clash on Saturday evening at the ATP 250 event.

The top-seeded Medvedev led home favourite Bublik 6-3 when the Kazakhstani stopped due to injury. Now into his fifth tour-level final of the season, the 30-year-old will take on qualifier Nikoloz Basilashvili in Sunday’s championship match.

“I just hope it’s nothing serious,” Medvedev said of Bublik. “I could see at the beginning of the match that he was struggling to move, so I needed to continue to try to win, because that is the only way on the tennis court. But I just hope it’s nothing serious and hopefully he can come back as soon as possible.”

Medvedev, who has won a Tour-leading 37 matches on hard courts in 2026, is now 10-1 at the Almaty Open, according to the Infosys ATP Win/Loss Index. With his run to the final in Kazakhstan, the former World No. 1 has further boosted his Nitto ATP Finals qualification hopes: Medvedev is sixth in the PIF ATP Live Race To Turin, just 55 points behind fourth-placed Flavio Cobolli.

Earlier on Saturday, Basilashvili produced a resilient showing to reach his first ATP Tour final since Doha in 2022. The Georgian outlasted Stefanos Tsitsipas 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-3 to become the fourth qualifier to reach a tour-level final in men’s singles this season (after Merida in Bucharest, Trungelliti in Marrakech, Buse in Hambug).

A former World No. 16, Basilashvili will be chasing his sixth ATP Tour trophy when he takes on Medvedev, who won the pair’s only previous Lexus ATP Head2Head meeting in Vienna in 2022. Regardless of Sunday’s result, the 34-year-old Basilashvili is guaranteed to return to the Top 100 on Monday for the first time since last November: He is currently up 31 spots to No. 97 in the PIF ATP Live Rankings.