Andrey Rublev might have had a stellar season on the Tour but he believes there is still plenty of room for improvement in his game.
The 26-year-old is currently at a ranking high of No.5 in the world and won his Maiden Masters 1000 title earlier this year in Monte Carlo. This season he also won another title in Bastad and reached the quarter-finals in three out of four Grand Slam tournaments played. His overall win-loss record for 2023 is 56-26.
“This year I have improved a lot in my backhand. This is something that I feel very good about, that it has become better,” Rublev told Championat.
“And I increased my movement. Now I move around the court much faster than at the beginning of the year. I began to maintain pace and speed much better, and began to defend better.”
Despite his success, the Russian admits that certain parts of his game are weaker compared to his peers in the world’s top 10. One of the most notable areas concerns his mentality during matches. At the ATP Finals Rublev lost his cool multiple times and at one stage was seen smashing his knee with his racket out of frustration. He has also lost his composure at other tournaments played such as the Shanghai Masters where he yelled at a person in the photographer area for moving during a crucial moment of his final clash with Hubert Hurkacz which he ended up losing in a final set tiebreak.
Although Rublev insists that it isn’t just his mentality that he needs to work on during the off-season.
“What needs to be improved? A ton of everything,” he stated.
“The main thing, of course, is psychology. This is what I miss the most compared to Novak Djokovic, Daniil Medvedev, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. They are much more stable than me psychologically.’
“As for the technical aspects, the movement can be further improved. And we (my team) need to improve my second serve. This component clearly stands out to me from a bad point of view compared to everyone else in the top 10. Everyone serves the second one stronger than me.”
According to the ATP’s Infosys Stats, Rublev is currently in 39th place for most second service points won on the Tour based on matches played within the past 52 weeks. However, his success rate of 51.4% is higher than both Daniil Medvedev and Alexander Zverev. Overall, he has a serve rating of 278.3 which is the 19th highest. A player’s serve rating is calculated by adding the four service metrics percentages together plus the average number of aces per match and then subtracting the average number of double faults per match.
“Access to the net needs to be improved. If, with my game, I will be able to finish off not only simple balls but be able to unexpectedly reach the net – this will give me a big advantage.” He continued.
“Even if I only improve my psychology and second serve, it will be a completely different tennis.”
Rublev has played 15 matches against top 10 players this season but has only won five of them.
