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Australian tennis player James Duckworth is happy with the season he has had as he is determined to continue improving and hopefully make even better results in 2022. Duckworth, 29, continued his good season this week at the Paris Masters as he made the quarterfinal before falling just short of Wimbledon semifinalist Hubert Hurkacz.
Duckworth, ranked at No. 55 in the world, pushed world No. 10 Hurkacz hard but the Pole escaped with a 6-2 6-7 (4) 7-5 win to progress into the Paris semifinal. Duckworth made his maiden ATP final in Nur-Sultan in late September and also achieved his career-high ranking of No.
51 this year. "I'll definitely take a lot of positives from this week," said Duckworth. "Since playing [in] Miami, I feel like I have been playing some good tennis and improving. There's still a few areas I need to get better at to get higher up the [FedEx ATP] Rankings."
Hurkacz praised Duckworth
Duckworth led 2-1 after the opening three games but Hurkacz then claimed back-to-back breaks and won five games in a row to take the opener.
Duckworth lost the early break he collected in the second set but dominated the tie-break to force a decider. Duckworth lost his serve in the worst possible time as Hurkacz broke the Australian in the 12th of the third set.
"James was playing some really good tennis," said Hurkacz. "He was very solid throughout the whole match, especially [in the] second and third sets. He was serving well and it was not easy to play against him. Obviously, in the back of my mind, I [knew] that basically I had to win today.
So that was putting a little bit more pressure [to] push me to compete as hard as I could." Surprisingly, Duckworth wasn't nominated to represent Australia at the Davis Cup Finals. Duckworth's season is likely over.