Bautista Agut vs Rublev ATP Hamburg tennis live streaming, preview and predictions

Just a handful of ranking places separate veteran Roberto Bautista Agut and rising Russian Andrey Rublev – who will reach the semifinals in Hamburg?

Bautista Agut vs Rublev is live from Hamburg on Friday 25 September, 11.30am local/10.30am BST

Returning to competition in Hamburg after the birth of his first child, Roberto Bautista Agut has already ousted defending champion Nikoloz Basilashvili and in-form Dominik Koepfer and is looking to reach his third semifinal of 2020 as he takes on Andrey Rublev.

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A quarterfinalist at the US Open, Rublev reached the final of the Hamburg European Open in 2019 but trails 1-2 in the head-to-head against Bautista Agut. Can he get the win in their first clay-court meeting?

Read on for our preview, predictions and live streaming information.

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Bautista Agut vs Rublev: Head-to-head

Roberto Bautista Agut leads the head-to-head with Andrey Rublev 2-1, although Rublev won their most recent encounter at the ATP Cup in January 3-6, 6-3, 7-6(0).

All three previous meetings have taken place on hard courts.

Bautista Agut vs Rublev: Preview

Playing Hamburg for the first time in five years, Bautista Agut has made quite an impact on the draw, snapping 2018-19 champion Nikoloz Basilashvili’s 12-match winning streak at the tournament before ousting the in-form Dominik Koepfer, who reached the quarterfinals of the Rome Masters last week as a qualifier and pushed Novak Djokovic to three sets.

Bautista Agut sat out the Rome Masters and had lost early at the US Open, going out to Vasek Pospisil in the third round which enabled him to head home for the birth of his first child, so he’s looking for matches ahead of the French Open. Bautista Agut broke his long-standing fourth-round barrier when he made the quarterfinals in Melbourne and the semifinals at Wimbledon in 2019, but he has never yet been past the last 16 at Roland Garros.

The world no. 11 has always been thought of more as a hard-court player, and he impressed at the ‘Cincinnati’ Masters a few weeks ago with wins over Karen Khachanov and Daniil Medvedev and a three-set battle with Djokovic, but he has won ATP Tour titles on all surfaces during his career and his relentless consistency from the baseline works on all surfaces as he showed during an uneven but typically tenacious 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 win over Koepfer.

Bautista Agut dropped serve six times and only won 56% of points behind his first serve, not numbers which he will have been too satisfied with. Will he do better against Rublev?

Andrey Rublev (PA Images)

Rublev also had to go the distance in his match against Tommy Paul, dropping serve twice himself in a 6-1, 3-6, 6-2 win which means he has now beaten two Americans in Hamburg, Tennys Sandgren and Paul. The Russian’s record is not as impressive on clay as it is on hard courts: He is 59-47 on clay, has reached two ATP Tour finals on it (in Hamburg last year) and has beaten one top-10 player on it (Dominic Thiem, again in Hamburg last year), while on hard courts he is 164-97, has won three titles (all in the past 12 months) and is 5-12 against top-10 players.

With a 19-5 record on hard courts in 2020 as opposed to 3-1 on clay, and defeated in an uneven match by Hubert Hurkacz at the Rome Masters last week, Rublev faces an uphill battle against Bautista Agut on this surface. While his win over the Spaniard at the ATP Cup in January was impressive, it came on a surface which maximised his big advantage over Bautista Agut – serving power. Rublev’s only real tactic is to power through Bautista Agut’s defense, which depends on him having a good day and is more difficult on clay

Bautista Agut vs Rublev: Prediction