His Kazakh rival, unceremoniously dismissed 6-4, 6-3 for their first confrontation, did not weigh very heavily against the Frenchman, particularly in spirit at the end of winter. Humbert ends a convincing sequence in the United Arab Emirates, which saw him dismiss in particular the Pole Hubert Hurkacz (8th in the world) after saving three match points in the quarter-final, then the Russian Daniil Medvedev (4th), defending champion, in half. “I played at a fantastic level throughout the week, but today it wasn’t easy,” responded Humbert, before receiving the trophy. “I have six finals, six victories, it’s just fantastic,” he said.
Here is Humbert promised to be 14th in the world from Monday, his best ranking since his ATP debut in 2017. A good omen for the best current Frenchman before the Masters 1000 at Indian Wells, where he will be a top seed to watch starting Wednesday in California. While waiting for this meeting, almost the major one of the season, the 25-year-old Messin can boast of adding Dubai to his list of achievements, which also includes the tournaments of Auckland, Antwerp (2020), Halle (2021) , already an ATP 500, from Metz (2023) at home, and from Marseille at the beginning of February. All without ever having lost when meeting on the last step.
He becomes the third player in the open era to achieve such a six out of six, after the Latvian Ernest Gulbis and the Slovakian Martin Klizan, in fact doing better than a big name like Carlos Alcaraz, who started his harvest with a 5 /5. “It’s incredible for me to win this tournament with all the names on this trophy. When we returned to the court, I saw all the winners between Federer, Djokovic, Murray, frankly I am very happy and very proud to be able to put my name next to them,” he said.
