Basilashvili Saves Three Set Points to Stop Tsitsipas in Almaty Semifinals

By Taki Panos

Three set points at 0-40, and not one of them landed. That was the moment Saturday's semifinal in Kazakhstan turned on, even if there was still a final set to play. Stefanos Tsitsipas lost 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-3 to Georgian qualifier Nikoloz Basilashvili in the semifinals of the Almaty Open, an ATP 250 event, on October 24, 2026, as the ATP Tour and Gazzetta reported. Basilashvili held all 16 of his service games, according to Tennis.com's match stats, and he is through to Sunday's final.

For anyone catching up, this had been a good week for the seventh seed. Tsitsipas saved three set points to beat Aleksandar Kovacevic in his opener, rolled past Kazakh wildcard Mikhail Kukushkin and then fired 15 aces against James Duckworth on Friday. Basilashvili, 34 and ranked No. 128, came through qualifying and then beat Marin Cilic, Facundo Diaz Acosta and Adrian Mannarino, per Tennis Majors. On paper, Tsitsipas, ranked No. 39, was the favorite. Tennis has never cared much about paper.

The first set got away early. Tsitsipas opened with a hold, but Basilashvili answered with a love game and then, from 15-15 in the third game, hit three winners in a row to break, Gazzetta reported. Another love hold made it 3-1, and the Georgian won 12 of 13 points after the opening game. Tsitsipas never earned a break point in the set, per Tennis Tonic. There was even a short stoppage for a lighting problem at 15-30 in the tenth game, Gazzetta noted, but Basilashvili came back out and closed the set 6-4.

The second set was Tsitsipas's best tennis of the afternoon, and also the most frustrating. He saved a break point in his first service game and recovered from 15-40 in the seventh game to hold for 4-3, TA NEA reported. An ace closed out the ninth game for 5-4. Then came the tenth game, with Basilashvili serving to stay in the set. Tsitsipas went up 0-40, three set points in a row, and the Georgian won the game anyway to level at 5-5, as both Gazzetta and TA NEA described it.

To his credit, Tsitsipas did not fold after that. He took the eleventh game with a crosscourt backhand winner after three deuces, per Gazzetta, and the set went to a tiebreak. Basilashvili led 4-2 there, which looked like the match slipping away. Tsitsipas answered with four straight points to reach 6-4 and converted his second set point for 7-6(5), TA NEA reported. Tennis TV shared his roar after the comeback, and for a few minutes it felt like the momentum had finally swung his way.

It had not. Tsitsipas faced three more break points in his first service game of the decider and saved all three to hold for 1-1, Gazzetta and TA NEA reported. Three aces in the fourth game kept him level at 2-2, and the set stayed on serve to 3-3. Then Basilashvili held to love for 4-3 and broke in the eighth game for 5-3. He served it out with one more love game. One break in each of the sets he won was all he needed.

The numbers explain why the Greek never got a real foothold on return. Basilashvili won 45 of 49 points behind his first serve, or 92 percent, per Tennis.com's match stats, and saved all three break points he faced, every one of them in that tenth game of the second set. Tsitsipas served well himself, with 11 aces, no double faults and 67 percent of first serves in. But he won only four of 49 points returning Basilashvili's first serve. With that little on return, one loose service game decides a set, and he had two.

Credit where it is due, because this is a lovely story for the Georgian. Basilashvili was once ranked as high as No. 16, has won five ATP titles and reached the Indian Wells final in 2021, TA NEA noted. Injuries pushed him far down the rankings. Saturday's win was his sixth in a row in Almaty, counting qualifying, per Naftemporiki, and it puts him in his first ATP final since 2022. Tennis Majors added that he is only the second qualifier to reach the final in the tournament's history, after Emil Ruusuvuori in 2020.

He will face top seed Daniil Medvedev, the defending champion, in Sunday's final. Medvedev got there the easy way. Alexander Bublik retired with an injury after losing the first set 6-3 in the other semifinal, as the ATP Tour scoreboard and Tennis Temple reported. Bublik, coming off a long three-set win over Karen Khachanov the day before, had been hoping to become the first Kazakh player to win the event. Medvedev beat Basilashvili 6-2, 6-2 in their only previous meeting, in Vienna in 2022, according to Tennis Majors.

For Tsitsipas, the week still counts as progress. Tennis Majors reported that the points from his semifinal run should lift him from No. 39 to No. 33 when the rankings update on Monday, close to a seeding at the Australian Open, a goal he has set for the end of the season. It was his second semifinal of 2026, Gazzetta noted, and the first, in Gstaad in July, turned into a final. This one did not, but the direction is the right one. Three wins in a week is not nothing.

My take: this one stings mostly because of that 0-40 game. Convert any of those three set points and Tsitsipas is a set up with the momentum behind him, and the whole afternoon looks different. Still, I would not overreact. He served well all week, won three matches and lost to an experienced former top-20 player who did not drop serve once in the entire match. The return game is the part to work on, not the attitude. That fight in the tiebreak was real, and it is the kind of thing that carries into the next event.

There is no time to dwell on it. Tsitsipas heads straight to Switzerland for the Basel tournament, which starts on Monday, October 26, according to TA NEA and Pentapostagma. It is a fitting stop, since the photo on this page was taken there in 2024. Keep an eye on our Greek Sports section for his first-round result and every other Greek story this week. Almaty is done. Basel is next.

Sources: ATP Tour, Tennis.com, Tennis Majors, Tennis Tonic, Tennis Temple, Gazzetta, TA NEA, Naftemporiki, Pentapostagma.

Image: Stefanos Tsitsipas at the Swiss Indoors Basel 2024 by Skyscraper2010, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).