Andrey Rublev has endured a very difficult 2025 season, losing his top-10 ranking and facing several highly demoralizing moments on court. His season has worsened in recent weeks, as he is currently on a five-match losing streak, with all five defeats coming in matches where he began as the favorite.
Since he will miss the ATP Finals for the first time this decade, the Paris Masters offers Rublev a final opportunity to achieve a strong result on a big stage, salvage something from an otherwise difficult year, and head into the off-season with improved morale. He is 3–5 in opening-round matches at the Masters level in 2025, with his best results being a couple of quarterfinals, making this the first season since 2020 without a semifinal appearance at a Masters event.
The former Paris Masters semifinalist has generally struggled on indoor hard courts this year, by his usually high standards of being highly consistent and dangerous. With four wins in seven matches, this marks his lowest win-loss tally on the surface since going 0–2 in his first-ever professional season back in 2013.
Jacob Fearnley’s strong season, which marked his breakthrough on the main tour, lost momentum a few months ago, and he even retired once at the Sumter Challenger a couple of months back. However, he has returned from that setback and is working hard to finish the year on a positive note. He successfully qualified for the main draw in Vienna last week and put up a strong fight against Alexander Zverev in the first round, losing in three sets.
For the second consecutive week, he has enjoyed a successful qualifying campaign, this time at the Paris Masters, where he is again drawn to face a top-20 player in the first round. The Briton has faced top-20 opponents eight times so far in his young career, losing seven of those encounters.
Head-to-head: 0-0. While Andrey Rublev is the more proven and accomplished talent at this level and on this surface, his current streak of self-sabotaging poor form gives Jacob Fearnly reason to be hopeful entering this clash.
