Belgium’s Alexander Blockx stuns Casper Ruud to reach Madrid semifinals

Alexander Blockx kept his Madrid Open surge rolling Thursday, beating defending champion Casper Ruud 6-4, 6-4 in 96 minutes to reach his first Masters 1000 semifinal and end Ruud’s title defense in the Spanish capital.

The 21-year-old Belgian had never won an ATP Tour-level clay-court match before April, yet in Madrid he has looked increasingly comfortable on the surface. He arrived in the last four after also beating third seed Felix Auger-Aliassime, and the Ruud victory gave him a third Top 20 win of the tournament, a run that has lifted him from promising outsider to a serious contender on one of tennis’s biggest stages.

Blockx’s ranking made the scale of the breakthrough even sharper. At world No. 69, he became the fourth-lowest-ranked player ever to reach the Madrid semifinals, and the ATP said he was only the second man born in 2005 or later to get to a Masters 1000 semifinal, following Jakub Mensik’s Miami title run in 2025. For a player who had been building confidence on the clay in Monte-Carlo and Madrid, the performance suggested more than one hot week.

Ruud came into the match as the 2025 champion and still needed a win to remain in the ATP Top 20, but Blockx never gave the Norwegian room to settle. In a first meeting that lasted little more than an hour and a half, Blockx played with clean aggression from the baseline and served with enough authority to keep control of the match. The altitude and heat in Madrid have helped the court play faster than a typical clay surface, conditions that suit his style and reduce some of the grind that usually favors more established clay-court specialists.

After the win, Blockx said, “I’m proud of how I’ve played these past couple of matches,” and pointed to the way Madrid’s conditions gave him time to set up shots while still rewarding his aggressive game. That balance has made the tournament an ideal stage for his sudden rise.

Blockx’s next opponent will be either second seed Alexander Zverev or 10th seed Flavio Cobolli. However the bracket falls, the Belgian has already turned Madrid into the clearest sign yet that the next wave in men’s tennis is no longer waiting politely for its turn.