{"id":937910,"date":"2026-10-18T18:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T18:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/937910\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T18:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T18:30:10","slug":"breaking-down-to-build-again-andrey-rublevs-bid-to-reinvent-himself-tennis-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/937910\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking down to build again: Andrey Rublev’s bid to reinvent himself | Tennis News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Breaking 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. 5. At 28, he is trying to become a different player.Rublev has slipped to No. 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.\u201cIt’s not easy to change something that you know for all your life,\u201d said Rublev, the No.4 seed at the Almaty Open, an ATP 250 event. \u201cIt\u2019s not easy to switch that, what brought you to No.5 in the world for something else that you don’t really trust yet.\u201dThe forehand, Rublev\u2019s biggest weapon, is a useful example. It\u2019s 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.\u201cI\u2019m trying to change, on and off the court, mentally, things that have become a habit, that have already taken me to the limit, with what I could do with that,\u201d he says, eyes fixed on the table before him. \u201cNow, it’s the second part of (my) career where I try to do something different completely.\u201dThere is no guarantee the experiment will work. Rublev knows that as well as anyone.\u201cMaybe it’s going to make the second part of my career better than my first part, or maybe not,\u201d he says, lifting his gaze and looking straight at the interviewer. \u201cBut at least I know I did something, I gave myself a chance.\u201d\u201cWith the game I used to have, it will go down little by little until I cannot play anymore,\u201d he says. \u201cTo be just top 30 for the next five-six years, for me, it makes no difference.\u201dFor the past 18 months, Rublev has been working with former world No. 1 Marat Safin, a partnership that pushed the 28-year-old to address mental and emotional struggles that has seen him harm himself physically on the court.Asked what has changed most since working with Safin, Rublev does not begin with tactics or results.\u201cI’m enjoying much more the life. I’m much more in peace with myself,\u201d he says.It is a striking answer from a player whose intensity has long been one of the defining features of his tennis.\u201cFrom the past, before Marat, I was very depressed,\u201d he says. \u201cTaking … antidepressant pills to don’t feel depression.\u201dHe pauses, taking a deep breath, before describing how low he had felt.\u201cBasically, it was a bit of drama that was happening to me, and I didn’t know how to escape. I was at the bottom of my darkest days.\u201dIt was there, he says, that he reached a point at which he could no longer continue as he had been. He faced a choice — to remain trapped in the same patterns or to try, finally, to do something about them.\u201cI choose to try to fix it,\u201d he said.Rublev is not short of reminders that reinvention is possible.\u201cWhen you see players like Sasha (Zverev) or Daniil (Medvedev), when they’re doing something good, it gives a clear signal that I can do it as well,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause I know what I’m capable of. If he can do it, I can find a way as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrey Rublev has spent much of his career trying to get better at being Andrey Rublev. Now, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":937911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[321228,596,50625,49,48,200022,82,593,321229],"class_list":["post-937910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-almaty-open","tag-andrey-rublev","tag-atp-rankings","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-marat-safin","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-player-struggles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/937911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}