Carlos Alcaraz dumped out of Qatar Open quarter-finals by Jiri Lehecka
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Spain's Carlos Alcaraz waving to the crowd after losing his Qatar Open quarter-final match against the Czech Republic's Jiri Lehecka.
PHOTO: REUTERS
DOHA – Carlos Alcaraz believes he did all he could despite crashing out of the Qatar Open at the quarter-final stage on Feb 20 after losing to Jiri Lehecka of the Czech Republic.
The top seed dropped the first set before recovering to level, and then led by a break in the decider, but world No. 25 Lehecka won the final four games for a 6-3, 3-6, 6-4 victory.
Alcaraz entered the clash on a seven-match winning streak following his triumph in Rotterdam, but ran into trouble against a confident Lehecka, who won his second career title in Brisbane to start the year.
“Honestly, I don’t know what I could have done better,” said the Spaniard.
“I have to give credit to him as well, because when he was down, especially in the third set, he didn’t give up. He was returning pretty well, really aggressively, no mistakes, or almost no mistakes.
“I leave Doha with the head up, with confidence, and really, really happy with everything that I’ve done here and how I felt here with my team. I’m going to come back next year.”
Lehecka will next play British eighth seed Jack Draper on Feb 21 for a place in the final – the result of that match was unavailable at press time. The Czech is through to the last four in Doha for the second time.
“I feel great,” he said. “To win a match like that against a player like this is a super big achievement. I believed in myself and knew I had the level to produce this kind of tennis.”
Draper battled back to beat Matteo Berrettini 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 in the last of the quarter-finals. Berrettini, a former world No. 6 and Wimbledon runner-up, had knocked out Novak Djokovic in the first round.
Jiri Lehecka of the Czech Republic celebrates winning against Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz on Feb 20.
In women’s tennis, Russian 17-year-old Mirra Andreeva became the youngest player to reach a WTA 1000 final since the format’s inception in 2009, as the world No. 14 defeated seventh-ranked Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 in the semi-finals of the Dubai Championships on Feb 21.
In the final, Andreeva will meet Denmark’s Clara Tauson or Czech Karolina Muchova, whose semi-final result was not available at press time.
In the quarter-finals, Andreeva recorded a straight-set win over world No. 2 Iga Swiatek, who said top seeds are struggling for results in the Middle East swing due to the crammed calendar and the travel involved in playing back-to-back WTA 1000 tournaments after a Grand Slam.
The Pole, 23, has failed to win a title in the Middle East for the first time in four years. She had won the Qatar Open from 2022 to 2024 but was knocked out in the semi-finals last week. She had also reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open in January, but has yet to win a title in 2025.
“For sure, it’s a calendar thing. We’re not going to be able to be consistent for many years playing week by week,” she said, when asked if playing back-to-back WTA 1000 events was a tricky challenge.
“We need to switch continents, switch surfaces, we need to switch the balls – it’s not easy, I’m not surprised.”
Aryna Sabalenka has also had a Middle East swing to forget after she lost early in both Qatar and Dubai. AFP, REUTERS