Andrey Rublev
23, falling outside the top 20 for the first time since January 2020 six weeks ago. For a player who finished inside the top 10 between 2020 and 2024, for five consecutive seasons, and reached 10 Grand Slam quarter-finals, the decline is striking. Yet, after 36 main-draw appearances at the majors without advancing beyond the last eight, Rublev has come to a realisation, to build something new, he must first be willing to break down what got him here. “It’s not easy to switch that, what brought you to No.5 in the world for something else that you don’t really trust yet.
“It’s not easy to change something that you know for all your life,” said Rublev, the No.4 seed at the Almaty Open, an ATP 250 event. “With the game I used to have, it will go down little by little until I cannot play anymore,” he says. “To be just top 30 for the next five-six years, for me, it makes no difference.”
Rublev has slipped to No. The forehand, Rublev’s biggest weapon, is a useful example. It’s a shot he could turn to under pressure almost without thinking. But the instincts that once served him so well can also become constraints when he is trying to expand his game.
- At 28, he is trying to become a different player.
“I choose to try to fix it,” he said. Andrey Rublev has spent much of his career trying to get better at being Andrey Rublev. Now, the mercurial Russian, whose on-court meltdowns are almost as well chronicled as his title wins, is attempting to rewrite the script that took him to world No. It is a striking answer from a player whose intensity has long been one of the defining features of his tennis.