'I knew what was at stake' - Casper Ruud exclusive on journey to making history at ATP Finals
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Updated 14/11/2021 at 14:42 GMT
Looking ahead to the ATP Finals in Turin, the eighth-seeded Casper Ruud is excited for his opener against five-time champion Novak Djokovic, and feels like he has nothing to lose. He spoke exclusively with Reem Abulleil about his journey to becoming the first Norwegian in history to qualify as one of the top eight players for the season-closing event as he prepares to begin his campaign.
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On a summer day in the ski resort town of Kitzbuhel, Austria earlier this season, Casper Ruud hit a backhand and watched the ball dance along the net cord before it awkwardly fell on the other side of the court.
Once he realised he had won the point, the Norwegian immediately fell to the ground, laying his back on his beloved clay, revelling in the fact that he had just become the first man since Andy Murray in 2011 to win three consecutive ATP titles in as many weeks.
Those 21 days Ruud spent sweeping past opponents to pick up titles in Bastad, Gstaad and Kitzbuhel didn’t just add to his trophy haul. Those triumphs came along with 750 valuable points that boosted Ruud’s position in the ATP Race from No.12 to No.8 when the new standings were released on August 2, 2021.
That’s when the 22-year-old began to seriously believe he had a chance to become the first Norwegian in history to qualify as one of the top eight players for the season-closing ATP Finals – a feat he officially secured three months later.
“I had a tough defeat in Roland Garros this year in the fifth set, like a roller coaster match, and unluckily it didn’t end my way,” Ruud told Eurosport ahead of his ATP Finals debut clash on Monday against top-seeded Novak Djokovic.
“So going into Wimbledon it was obviously fun to play on grass but then the plan was to play some more clay after and I kind of wanted a little bit of revenge and to finish the clay season in a better way than I did in Roland Garros.
So I had just a lot of motivation for the summer, and those three tournaments that I won back-to-back-to-back, after that the goal to finish here in Turin became more realistic.
That Roland Garros loss he is referring to was a real heartbreaker. Ruud arrived in Paris as one of the most in-form players on clay for the season. He was 15-4 on the red dirt coming into the French Open, and had just scooped a title in Geneva after reaching the semi-finals in Monte Carlo and Madrid.
His Roland Garros campaign was halted in the third round by Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, who came out on top in a gruelling four-and-a-half-hour battle.
Switching to grass, Ruud made the quarter-finals in Mallorca before falling in five sets to Jordan Thompson in the opening round at Wimbledon.
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Ruud beats Bublik to reach the last 16 at the Paris Masters
A clay cleanse
It was only natural for Ruud to seek a clay cleanse after two tough early exits at the majors and he ended up going beyond his wildest expectations.
“I honestly played with not too much pressure,” he recalls. “Two in a row is something many players have done before, you’re in good form and good shape and you’re playing well. I’m not going to say that it’s easy at all, but you gain respect from your opponents when you win one tournament and you come into the next one, you have a lot of confidence in yourself.
“But then the third week it’s obviously tougher because you’re mentally and physically starting to wear down a little bit. But I was able to stay strong. I was a bit lucky in Kitzbuhel, I saved a couple of match points on the way to the title.
“I just knew that trying to go for winning back-to-back-to-back would be something quite special and something I would always remember, probably for the rest of my career and life.
The [net cord] match point just summed up my margins for those weeks that I was a bit lucky as well.
A former junior No.1, Ruud is coached by his father Christian, who was a top-40 player in the mid-1990s.
Parent coaches are not a novelty in tennis, but father-son duos with professional playing experience at the top echelons of the tour are not as common and you don’t see too many former top-50 players serving as travelling coaches with their sons full-time.
For the Ruud clan, it was a natural fit from the start, even though Christian did take a break from travelling with Casper during his mid-teen years.
“I owe him a lot – my success is because of him,” Casper says of his father.
“He was quite strict with me when we were young and it’s paying off obviously years later, but I’m glad he was. He kept me focused, he kept me on the right directions. He knew already that from a young age it’s important to do a lot of good practices, to put down a lot of hours on court and work hard.
“So that has been our plan for many years already and we’re still going strong and I hope we can go on for many more years.”
Striking the right balance between seeing your father as a parent and as a coach can be tricky, but with time, the Ruuds seem to have mastered the situation. They both share a passion for golf – Casper has a separate Instagram dedicated to golf – and enjoy spending time together away from the court.
“It can obviously be challenging and I think the years when I was 16 to 18 are not necessarily the years you’d like to have your father around every single day. So I actually went to Spain, to Alicante, to get some help from a Spanish coach, who did most of the travelling with me,” explained the younger Ruud.
“My father came sometimes here and there but I also have two younger sisters that my father wanted to spend time with. Because he had already done 15 years of travelling in his life during his career, so for him to go straight for another, hopefully 15, 20 years with me was a bit tough.
“I think he’s ready for it now, but at the time we thought it was natural to get some help from abroad, find a place to have a training base more than Norway, and that was the right decision.”
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Nadal an idol
At 19, Ruud began training at the Rafa Nadal Academy in Mallorca. He idolised Nadal growing up and now gets to practise with him from time to time and has even joined the Spaniard on the golf course on multiple occasions.
During a press conference in Turin on Friday, Ruud said he aspired to create a certain aura around himself that would intimidate his opponents, citing Nadal as a perfect example to follow in that regard.
“That’s something that all players I think chase to get that kind of status where your opponents fear you in a way,” he said. “If you look at the guy you play on Monday [Djokovic], it’s like this with him, or if you play Nadal on clay, everyone knows that, ‘This is going to be extremely tough, if I want to win I have to play my best game ever and I’ll have to be out here for three hours’.
“If I can just achieve a small percentage of that kind of feeling the players maybe have for a player like Nadal on clay, I will be happy.”
Before Casper came along, his father held all the records in Norwegian tennis. Now it is the younger Ruud who is making history for his nation, becoming the first from Norway to crack the top 10, win an ATP title – he leads the tour alongside Djokovic and Alexander Zverev with five titles this season – or qualify for the ATP Finals.
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Casper Ruud
Image credit: Getty Images
He’s the only Norwegian in the top 350 and has become used to the responsibility of flying the flag solo for his country.
“I didn’t know too many people. I’m not going to say that the tour is divided by countries but you have the Russian-speaking players that get along well, and you have the Spanish-speaking guys, the Italians, you have groups of guys that are much bigger than the Norwegian group, because we are not that many,” he says when asked about life on tour without too many compatriots around.
“It’s for now only me that is in the top 100 and travelling around to these events. But I always was able to bring a coach, [and] my fitness coach also with me, so I was never alone or lonely in that way. But obviously I sometimes envied the guys that had many guys from the same country to go out and have dinner with or these things.
“But in the end I’m happy with how the situation is, it makes me also appreciate the Davis Cup and ATP Cup and these team events a lot because then you’re together as a group from your country.”
Nothing to lose
Looking ahead to Turin, the eighth-seeded Ruud is excited for his opener against five-time champion Djokovic, and feels like he has nothing to lose.
The 22-year-old has limited experience indoors, with 56 percent of his tour-level matches contested on clay. Five of his six career titles were won on the red dirt, with his success in San Diego last month earning him a maiden triumph on hard courts. It was an important victory that could help him eventually shake his ‘clay-court specialist’ reputation.
In the build-up to Turin, Ruud was in a tight battle with Hubert Hurkacz, Jannik Sinner and Felix Auger-Aliassime for the remaining two qualification spots. Quarter-final showings at the indoor hard-court events in Vienna and Paris ultimately sealed the deal for Ruud but he admits the pressure was “almost too much to handle”.
“I haven’t had too much success on indoors before but this year I’ve luckily been able to because I really needed to if I wanted to end my year here in the ATP Finals in Turin,” he said. “So I knew what was at stake when I started my indoor season in Vienna and then Paris, those two weeks were big for me; I knew I had a lot of things to play for.
“I was able to do well and here we are ending the season in Turin, it’s just an amazing experience and I can’t wait to start my match on Monday.”
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