LI's Noah Rubin loses to Mikhail Kukushkin at U.S. Open

The loss was disappointing, but the attitude is upbeat.

Noah Rubin’s return to the U.S. Open ended with a first-round loss to Mikhail Kukushkin on Tuesday, a four-set slog at a sweltering Billie Jean National Tennis Center.

Rubin stumbled during the first two sets, rallied to take the third and eventually went down 6-3, 6-1, 4-6, 7-6 (3) to the Kazakstan veteran who is ranked 84th in the world.

“Right out of the gate he started to play some really great tennis. All the credit goes to him,” Rubin said, who lost in the first round of the 2014 Open.  “I maybe played too fast on my end, but he hits a great ball. I’ve seen him play and never really seen him hit the spots like he did.”

It was difficult for Rubin to gain any traction on Kukushkin’s first serve and he won 82 percent of his first-serve points.

“He doesn’t have a great first serve, he’s not someone who is a huge first server,” Rubin said.  “But he’s tricky in the fact he has great hands. Even if I hit a great return it’s more that he has great hands and he can do with the ball kind of what he wants.”

He dug a real hole for himself in losing the first two sets. “Tough first set, the second set got away from me,” Rubin said. “I sunk my teeth into the third, knew he would be tired and I had the crowd behind me. The fourth I had an early break and a game point and it was tough to give that one up.  It’s a live and learn type of thing.”

His father Eric, who was also his first coach, was pleased with what he saw.

"He knew that Kukushkin is a real veteran, the heat wouldn’t get to him, he’s a real consistent player,” Eric Rubin said. “I thought Noah played really, really, really well.  He knew he had to be out there awhile. Kukushkin has a very underrated serve, absolutely has a serve that you don’t know where it’s going and it’s got a lot of stuff on it.”

This had been a reasonable season for the 22-year-old from Merrick, and an especially good one when you consider he was significantly impacted by injuries after he turned professional in 2015, having a spent a year at Wake Forest.

He has ATP tournament level wins over John Isner and Mikhail Youzny this year, as well as two Challenger level tournament victories. He’s risen to 135 in the world. He was given a wild card into the Open and got one into the French Open as well.