By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Monday October 5, 2020
Andrey Rublev is having a career year in 2020 and his success is is a product of his passion for the sport.
Photo Source: AP
Andrey Rublev was finally healthy, and hitting his stride. In January the Russian had won back-to-back titles and reeled off 11 consecutive wins before finally falling in the round of 16 at the Australian Open. He was the first player since Dominik Hrbaty in 2004 to win back-to-back titles in the first two events of the season.
After a few rough battles with injuries over the previous two seasons, it felt like the top 10 was the next stop for the Rublev express.
Then the coronavirus hit and everything stopped--but it did not stop Rublev’s progress.
A few months after tennis’ restart it’s clear that the Russian made the most of his time in the off-season. Lockdown was miserable, but along with his coach, Fernando Vicente, Rublev kept working and learning and growing.
It's what he's all about as a person, and as a player.
Vicente says the pandemic has been terrible for obvious reasons, but it did provide him with a long training block to really hammer home some key concepts with his charge.
"I was alone in the club with him,” Vicente says. “We open the club and we close the club and we stay by the coffee machine, so after practice we were sitting there also with the physio, talking about everything—life, tennis—things that are normal when you talk with the friends.
"So really nice on one side, really disappointing on the other because we couldn't play tournaments."
Vicente, a former World No.29 from Spain, runs through a laundry list of things that Rublev wanted to improve during the time off.
"I was thinking okay now we're going to have huge time and we prepare with the fitness coach and the physio and then man we have to improve his mobility we need to improve his legs, his defensive game, his touch, his net game, serve-and-volley, all the things that you don't have time to do because one normal off-season is different,” he said.
“You have four weeks you are tired and you are going to start in Doha or something like that it's not really a long period that you really have. We have to improve let's go and improve."
Clearly the work they've done has paid dividends. Since tennis restarted Rublev has reached the quarterfinals at the US Open, won the title at Hamburg, and reached the quarterfinals at Roland Garros, where he had never won a main draw match before.
Despite all the difficulties of 2020, Rublev should feel proud. He has put together a fantastic season and now owns a 29-6 record in 2020, with three titles. The 22-year-old Russian has clearly come a long way. As he said so eloquently on Monday after he defeated Marton Fucsovics in four sets, an even longer way since his junior days.
“I would say at that time I was not even a player,” the 2014 Roland Garros Boys' Singles champion said when asked to compare the 2014 Rublev to the Rublev of today. “I mean, it's different. I was completely different. I was kid. I was doing stupid things on court, off court.”
Rublev says that the one constant over these last six years has been his love for the sport.
“I really loved tennis,” he said. “I was working really hard when I was kid. But I didn't understand at that moment what tennis is. I didn't understand what you need to do on court, what you need to do out of court. I was just hitting, practicing, hitting, because I love it, but without any thinking how to play, what you need to do, how to defend and all these little details. I didn't even know how it works. At that time was more about shots, if I had good day, something like that. But juniors, you cannot compare to what is happening now.”
These days, as a solid fixture in the top 20, ranked No.12 in the world with Vicente’s help, Rublev is a more astute tactical player.
“The good thing now is that he understands, and I help him to understand when to play certain directions, when you have power you have to choose well, you cannot choose wrong because if you do you run double,” Vicente said. “You hit in wrong direction you keep running, it's simple things, in the end you have to see more or less how the good players and the top players, which directions they are using."
Vicente’s words run parallel to what Rublev was saying about himself in his press conference today, and it’s something that the Russian talks about a lot. At the US Open he told me that Vicente is great at reading the game and knowing the ins and outs of where to hit and when to be aggressive or defensive. He says he’s learning, but not there yet.
“He told me that nobody explained really how to play that nobody told him to go line or why to go cross, when you are dictating with the forehand where to go, when to choose inside-in or inside-out, if you play tennis you must understand and now I feel that he understands,” Vicente says. “When he plays wrong directions, he understands why it's not working sometimes."
This tactical awareness, combined with his willingness to suffer and his desire to be a better professional on and off the court, are all contributing to his breakout success in 2020. He’s always had an amazing ability to throw his entire body into his shots and crush tennis balls. Now he is connecting dots and thinking his way through rallies. For him to have success in Paris, in the slowest possible clay-court conditions where there is no easy way to get out of a rally except by making an error, is a true testament to how far he has come and how truly solid he is as a player.
Vicente is clearly jazzed when he talks about Rublev. He’s quick to criticize him or poke fun at him, but deep down it’s obvious that the pair have a deep bond, and a friendship. It’s also easy to tell that it’s a big reason that things are going so well for Rublev in 2020.
"I'm so happy because this guy has fallen in love with tennis,” Vicente says. “He's hard working and he enjoys it. Even if he makes mistakes. Doesn't matter. You know that sometimes they are not happening, these changes, in two days, because he's young and he needs to do 1,000 mistakes still.
"It's not that. Now I'm really happy in the sense that I'm happy. It's never enough in this life. If you are nine you want to be three. If you are three you want to be one. So I'm here just to try to stay calm and to not show that much. It's more about to stay there and to try to support.”