Holger Rune continues to wait for his first win on the ATP Tour since returning from injury.
Rune spent nearly a year on the sidelines after rupturing his Achilles at the Stockholm Open last year, an injury which forced him to miss all four Grand Slams this year.
The former world number four made his return at the Davis Cup, where Rune helped Denmark to beat Bulgaria with wins over Grigor Dimitrov and Iliyan Radulov.
However, the 23-year-old has not found so much success on the ATP Tour, with Rune losing in the first round of the Japan Open and now the Shanghai Masters, which will now have a dramatic impact on his ranking.
Holger Rune will drop outside the top 1200 after Shanghai Masters loss
Rune emphatically won the first set of his first round match in Shanghai against Daniel Altmaier, but he was ultimately beaten 1-6, 7-6(5), 6-4.
Prior to the match even taking place, Rune was the world number 195, having played so little tennis in the past 12 months.
This week is the same week that the Stockholm Open took place last year, where Rune reached the semi-finals before suffering the Achilles injury that kept him out of action for so long.
As a result, Rune will drop the 100 points he earned from his run in Stockholm last year when the ATP rankings update after the Shanghai Masters, which will cause him to drop all the way outside the top 1200. This will be Rune’s lowest ranking since 2019, when he was just 16 years old and was yet to play an ATP Tour match.
While Rune has dropped dramatically down the rankings, he still has a protected ranking he can rely on and has no ranking points to defend until the Shanghai Masters.
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Holger Rune claims he is ‘on the right track’ after Shanghai exit
While it is another disappointing first round defeat for Rune, he appears to be reflecting more positively on this loss compared to his early exit in Tokyo.
In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), Rune claimed that he felt like he was on the right track after pointing out that he had actually won more points than his opponent.
Rune wrote, “Won 53% of the points, but not the one that mattered the most…and Altmaier played well. A lot was way better in this match than in my last , so definitely on the right track. I keep working. Step by step. See you soon on court again.”
There are still plenty more opportunities for Rune to return to winning ways this year, having also entered the Swiss Indoors in Basel, the Paris Masters, where he is a former champion, and the aforementioned Stockholm Open.
