With the news this week of Anastasia Potapova deciding to shift over to Austria, it highlights the lack of Russian options as they continue to find themselves bitten by the war in Ukraine especially on the men’s side of the sport.
Daniil Medvedev has long been the outlier but he is falling at a rapid rate with the 29-year-old former World No.1 now World No.13 and he sits on 2,760 points just marginally ahead of the only other two Russian’s within the top 150.Those being very much known names in Andrey Rublev and Karen Khachanov who themselves have had better times when it comes to their current predicament. It has to be noted too that Rublev in particular has shown that he is against the war in Ukraine and it has come to the surprise of some that he hasn’t yet defected similar to Daria Kasatkina.
But he is friends with the other two members of the top 20 who ironically competed in the Gazprom backed exhibition in St Petersburg which ironically featured Anastasia Potapova pre her deciding to shift over to Austria.
Khachanov is next up in World No.18. But it also unearths another problem even further down as while only 17 Russian players are ranked inside the top 500, just eight of them are under the age of 27.
Among those eight younger players, none are ranked inside the world’s top 250. This in contrast with the WTA albeit many are already established in Mirra Andreeva, Ekaterina Alexandrova and Liudmila Samsonova all in the top 20 of the rankings. Diana Shnaider has also previously been top 15 and also plays doubles with Andreeva.
But this pipeline is a problem as even in the women’s game such players as Potapova and Kasatkina have defected whether for the latter due to also fears for her own safety if she was to return to her homeland as well as in Potapova’s case likely due to visa troubles.
Even for established names such as Andreeva, getting into certain tournaments as was murmured even at the end of the last season provided a bit of an issue due to where she is from. While Potapova has now circumnavigated that whether she remains living in Russia or not.
Others have done it for other reasons such as Elena Rybakina and Alexander Bublik who were early movers to Kazakhstan, Elina Avanesyan is of Armenian descent so decided to move to that nation. So while it is not a new practice, it shows that amid all of the restrictions that are placed on Russians that this is now effecting the future stars.
From Medvedev back to Marat Safin for instance there have always been top Russians in the rankings even in the likes of Kuznetsova in the WTA but that could soon be a thing of the past if this continues the trend it has been.
ATP Rankings (Russian players in men’s rankings)#PlayerNationalityAgePoints13Daniil MedvedevRUS29276016Andrey RublevRUS28252018Karen KhachanovRUS292320172Roman SafiullinRUS28338255Ilia SimakinRUS22214260Ivan GakhovRUS29213283Marat SharipovRUS23188330Petr Bar BiryukovRUS23157374Aslan KaratsevRUS32131375Alibek KachmazovRUS23130377Alexey VatutinRUS33130391Svyatoslav GulinRUS23125432Alexandr BindaRUS24110456Maxim ZhukovRUS2098460Pavel KotovRUS2796474Nikolay VylegzhaninRUS2592475Andrey ChepelevRUS2792