Carlos Alcaraz’s hopes of becoming the first player to win three straight Madrid Open titles came undone as the second seed was beaten in front of his home crowd 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 by the Russian seventh seed, Andrey Rublev, in the quarter-finals on Wednesday. It will be Rublev’s first semi-final in Madrid. The 26-year-old had entered the tournament on a four-match losing streak, including defeats in Miami, Monte Carlo and Barcelona. “Maybe this week is a relief but then next week we go back to the same … so better not to think this way because when you start to think: ‘Oh, how good everything is’. That’s what happened at the beginning of the season,” he said.
