Karen Khachanov 2025 Season Review – A solid season but a missed opportunity

Karen Khachanov has been a solid top 20 players since 2018 and this year was no different, even if he was briefly ranked inside the top 10 (without topping his previous career high ranking of #8 though). It will, however, be a reason he will remember for how excruciatingly close he was to winning a second career Masters 1000 title in Canada, losing to Ben Shelton in the third set tiebreak.

Karen Khachanov 2025 Season Review

A poor start

Before the grass season kicked off, Khachanov was having an awful season, despite some decent performances here and there, with the highlight being a run to the semifinals in Barcelona, losing to eventual champion Holger Rune. Aside from that, it was a string of early losses and no real notable wins, with the way he got straight setted by Alex Michelsen at the Australian Open being particularly disappointing.

He did improve his level a bit on grass and was actually quite close to getting a first career win against Carlos Alcaraz in Rome, losing 5-7 in the third set. He also lost a very long and tough five setter to Tommy Paul in the third round of Roland Garros. Although the results weren’t appearing, his level was clearly rising.

Bouncing back on grass

After a quarterfinal loss to Gabriel Diallo in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Khachanov had a very good grass season. He lost an extremely close semifinal in Halle to Alexander Bublik (who had beaten Jannik Sinner and would go on to then beat Daniil Medvedev and win title). He then went on to reach the quarterfinals at Wimbledon for the second time in his career, even if he did benefit from a very favorable draw and Nuno Borges failing to serve for the match against him. The quarterfinal against Taylor Fritz was very close and he was a break up in the fourth set, with a chance to take it to a decider, but the American eventually prevailed in the 4th set tiebreak. It was still a very nice run for Khachanov, who finally seemed back on track.

Canada final

The highlight of Khachanov’s year undoubtedly came in Canada. He had an excellent run to the semis (even getting revenge on Alex Michelsen for the Australian Open defeat in the quarterfinals) and there he saved a match with a miraculous netcord and went on to beat the #1 seed Alexander Zverev to make his second ever Masters 1000 final. The final was a very long and intense match, dominated by serve, a match that could genuinely have gone either way. However, Shelton’s superior serve gave him the edge in the third set tiebreak and Khachanov will have to wait for another opportunity to win such a big title. Unfortunately, this defeat seems to have ruined his good momentum and he didn’t managed to get any other great results until the end of the season.