In September, two months after reaching the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, having earlier in the year successfully defended a title in Munich and reached the final of two Masters 1000 tournaments (Monte Carlo and Rome), Holger Rune, world No 6, was facing a player ranked more than 100 places below him, and yet a seventh consecutive defeat stared back.
When Thiago Monteiro won the third set of the Davis Cup rubber 6-2, Rune, who along with Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner is one of the most exciting prospects in men’s tennis, looked physically and mentally spent. He went on to lose three of his next four matches to complete a dire run of late-summer form: 11 matches, 10 losses.
