‘I’m working on it!’ – ‘Stupid’ Rublev on his mental progression

Andrey Rublev was on fine form in Turin when pressed about the work he still needs to do on his temperament.

During his 6-2, 6-4 defeat to Casper Ruud in the semi-finals of the ATP year-end Finals, the Russian was seen at the changeover shouting at himself and hitting his legs – and his emotional outbursts around the court have not been particularly rare during his career so far.

But the 25-year-old assured reporters that he knows it’s something he still has to improve.

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“Of course, I want to believe that I’m working on that, then I’m stupid,” he laughed along with the journalists. “But, yeah, I’m trying to work on it. Obviously I think the match today shows that I have improvements. Is just not easy to do it like this.”

Rublev: Improving my mentality is tough for me

And he acknowledged that it would continue to take time before he had it completely under control.

“I have so much fire inside, it’s double tougher for me,” he added. “Every person [has] his own weaknesses. For some players it’s tough to play aggressive. It takes time for them to learn how to play aggressive. Or opposite, to play more defense, to learn how to play defense. For some players it’s tough to improve serve.

“For some players it’s tough to improve mental part. I guess I’m one of the ones who is tough to improve mental part, and it takes the most time. I mean, I’m improving it. I think the US Open show[s] it already. Today[‘s] match also show this. But it takes time. It’s like the same with the forehand, backhand. If you have not good forehand or weak backhand, it takes really long time to improve it. I know it by myself because all my life I had really bad backhand, and it took me years to improve, to be able to be solid or hit sometimes winners. It took me years to improve. So it takes time.”

Rublev won four titles this year: in Gijon, Belgrade, Dubai and Marseille, and reached the quarter-finals of the US Open and Roland-Garros.

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