As Andrey Rublev embraced Carlos Alcaraz at the end of their fourth-round encounter, there was something different from previous stinging defeats. There was no fury, just acceptance.
For the longest time, watching a Rublev match was an anxiety-riddled experience. You’d hope his composure would hold, but then you’d see the slump of the shoulders, the glances to the sky, and you’d know inevitably what was coming next.
At best, he would mutter to himself, trying to answer questions his brain simply couldn’t process in that moment. Then, sadly, came the escalations. The mutters would turn to screams, rackets would be slammed to the ground, and, distressingly, sometimes even on himself.
His self-ire sadly reached a peak last year when he was defaulted for screaming at a line judge in Dubai, and also smashed his racquet into his own leg at both Wimbledon and the Paris Masters. It looked as though he was getting lost in a chasm of his own temperament, unable to gather his emotions rationally before the eruption.
Which is why this latest version of Rublev feels so quietly positive. The calm was not the absence of fire or passion, but the containment of it. Losing to Alcaraz would have been no less painful, but this time, there was no self-destruct button in sight.
In his press conference after the match he stated, “The level is there. Now it’s more about some details. In the last week and a half since I came to Wimbledon, I don’t remember myself on this kind of level [for a while]. If I will be able to keep it, then for sure something will happen.”
The task now is to maintain this mentality moving forward. He has Marat Safin as his coach now, a man once prone to many an outburst, but who also managed to channel that fire into two Grand Slam title-winning runs. That will be vital for Rublev as he seeks to channel the fire into consistent success at the top level once again.
The main question that remains is whether he can carry this new mentality to the next level and finally break his quarter-final curse at the Grand Slams. He is currently 0–10 at this stage, an Open Era record. In his defence, most of those defeats have come against elite players like Sinner, Alcaraz, and Djokovic, with only his straight-sets loss at the 2022 US Open standing out as a performance he might outright regret.
If he remains fit and in the right mindset, time is on his side, especially in the modern era, where 27 is generally considered quite young. There is no doubt about his ability: he possesses a hammer of a forehand, a strong two-handed backhand, and a top-level first serve.
If Rublev can keep his focus where it matters, on the positives in his game, and steer his mind away from the storm of self-doubt, there’s no reason he can’t finally get past this quarter-final hurdle. For now, it’s more than enough to see this popular player playing great tennis and finding a calm within himself. Maybe that will turn out to be his greatest victory of all.
