Cincinnati 2021: Andrey Rublev & Karen Khachanov to team up in doubles, Jannik Sinner to join forces with Hubert Hurkacz
Fresh off medal-winning runs at the Tokyo Olympics 2021, Andrey Rublev and Karen Khachanov will be teaming up for men's doubles at the Western and Southern Open in Cincinnati.
The ATP Masters 1000 tournament, scheduled to be held from 16 to 23 August, has a star-studded line-up in doubles. Quite a few top singles players have put their name down on the entry list.
Wimbledon and Olympic champions Mate Pavic and Nikola Mektic are the top seeds, and the field also has Jannik Sinner and Hubert Hurkacz joining forces. Sinner, 19, won his maiden ATP doubles title with Reilly Opelka in Atlanta last week, and will be looking to bring that momentum to Cincinnati.
World No. 18 Alex de Minaur will be returning to defend the title he won in partnership with Pablo Carreno Busta last year. This time De Minaur has teamed up with Great Britain's Cameron Norrie, who triumphed in Los Cabos in singles recently.
World No. 15 and Wimbledon quarterfinalist Felix Auger-Aliassime is another top singles star on the doubles entry list. The young Canadian, who is yet to taste title glory in singles, won the Paris Masters doubles title with Hubert Hurkacz last year.
Auger-Aliassime will look to sharpen his volleying singles ahead of the US Open when he takes the court alongside New Zealand's Olympic bronze medalist Marcus Daniell.
Andrey Rublev and Karen Khachanov have reached 2 ATP Masters 1000 finals in doubles
Andrey Rublev and Karen Khachanov were part of the ROC contingent that won three medals at the ongoing Tokyo Olympics. While Rublev and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova beat Aslan Karatsev and Elena Vesnina in an all-Russian mixed doubles final, World No. 25 Khachanov finished runner-up to Alexander Zverev in men's singles.
At Cincinnati, the men's singles silver medalist Khachanov and the mixed doubles gold medalist Rublev will join forces as they look to continue their memorable summer.
Rublev and Khachanov have paired up on numerous occasions in the past, which includes Davis Cup outings as well as ATP tournaments. However, they are yet to win a title together.
The two made a fabulous run to the final of the Miami Open in 2018, where they went down fighting to Bob and Mike Bryan in a match tie-break. The following year Andrey Rublev and Karen Khachanov found their spark once again at the Paris Masters, where they fell to Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert in the final.
Rublev has since gone on to add the Qatar Open title to his resume, which he won earlier this year with Aslan Karatsev. Now with Olympic medals in their kitty, both he and Khachanov will hope to pull off more magic at Cincinnati.