Breaking to Build Again: Andrei Rublev’s Quest for Reinvention

Andrey Rublev has spent much of his career trying to be better than Andrey Rublev. Now the mercurial Russian, whose on-court meltdowns are almost as well-documented as his title wins, is attempting to rewrite the script that took him to world No.5. At the age of 28, he is trying to become a different player.Rublev dropped to 23rd, dropping out of the top 20 for the first time since January 2020 six weeks ago. For a player who finished in the top 10 between 2020 and 2024, five consecutive seasons and reached 10 Grand Slam quarterfinals, the decline is striking. Still, after 36 main draw appearances at the majors without advancing past the last eight, Rublev realized that to build something new, he must first be willing to tear down what got him here.“It’s not easy to change something you’ve known your whole life,” said Rublev, the No. 4 seed at the Almaty Open, an ATP 250 event. “It’s not easy to change what got you to No. 5 in the world for something else that you don’t have much faith in yet.”The forehand, Rublev’s greatest weapon, is a useful example. It’s a shot he was able to turn on under pressure almost without thinking. But the instincts that once served him so well may also become limitations as he tries to expand his game.“I’m trying to mentally change things on and off the court that have become habitual, that have already pushed me to the limit of what I could do with it,” he says, his eyes fixed on the table in front of him. “Now it’s the second part of (my) career where I’m trying to do something completely different.”There is no guarantee that the experiment will work. Rublev knows this as well as anyone.“It might make the second part of my career better than the first, or it might not,” he says, looking up and looking directly at the interviewer. “But at least I know I did something, I gave myself a chance.“With the game I had, it would gradually decline until I couldn’t play anymore,” he says. “Just being top 30 for the next five to six years makes no difference to me.”For the past 18 months, Rublev has worked with former world number one Marat Safin, a partnership that has seen the 28-year-old deal with mental and emotional issues that have left him physically harming himself on court.When asked what has changed the most since working with Safin, Rublev doesn’t start with tactics or results.“I’m enjoying life a lot more. I’m a lot more at peace with myself,” he says.It’s a striking response from a player whose intensity has long been one of the defining features of his tennis.“From the past, before Marat, I was very depressed,” he says. “Take… anti-depressant pills so you don’t feel depressed.He pauses, taking a deep breath before describing how deeply he felt.“Basically it was a bit of drama that happened to me and I didn’t know how to escape. I was at the bottom of my darkest days.”It was there, he says, that he reached a point where he could no longer continue as he was. He was faced with a choice – to remain trapped in the same patterns or to finally try to do something about them.“I decided to try to fix it,” he said.Rublev does not lack reminders that reinvention is possible.“When you see players like Sasha (Zverev) or Daniil (Medvedev) doing something good, it gives a clear signal that I can do it too,” he says. “Because I know what I’m capable of. If he can do it, I’ll find a way too.”