Andrey Rublev has sparked massive doubts over his campaign at the Monte-Carlo Masters after he sustained an injury during his first-round fixture against Portugal’s Nuno Borges on Monday.
The 2023 Monte-Carlo Masters champion was forced to take an off-court medical timeout in the opening set as he struggled with his shoulder. Rublev returned to the court after the medical timeout and raced to a 6-4 win in the opening set.
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The injury began to take a toll on Rublev’s rhythm in the second set as he succumbed to a 1-6 defeat. In the decisive, he dug deep to notch a 6-1 win and end Nuno’s campaign in Monaco. For the World No. 15, the significance of his victory was massive. In the see-saw encounter, Andrey Rublev fought against the odds and even contemplated pulling out of the contest.
“Obviously, I think today was exactly a mental victory for me, because in one moment, I thought, okay, it’s done. And then I was able to kind of, Okay, let’s just accept it, let’s just kind of trust, let’s trust, don’t start to put pictures now, ‘It’s over, I cannot play, maybe I need to pull out or something’. Let it be the way it should be,” Rublev said straight after the match.
“In the end, I think for sure it helped a lot. First of all, to be able to finish the first set, and then somehow to not pay attention that I am losing in the second. In the end, somehow, out of nowhere, I start to feel better. I was able to fight again, to play better, and in the end, I was able to win a match,” he added.
Rublev gave a detailed insight into how the pain aggravated as the game progressed. The 28-year-old suspected that he had picked up the issue way before he first experienced it. In the opening set, when the scoreboard stood at 4-3, Rublev felt pain during the serve, which amplified with each passing set. He jokingly stated that he took a “horse dose” of painkiller to deal with the pain.
“To be honest, was a bit earlier, I just didn’t feel it. When I came back from the changeover at 4-3, when I went for a serve, I start to feel it a little bit. After the first serve that I did, I start to feel it much more, and after that long rally, is when it was completely done,” Andrey Rublev said.
“The body feeling? I don’t know, because I took a horse dose of painkillers and a medical [timeout]. So I don’t know, let’s see after five, six hours, or tomorrow, how is the body?” he added with a laugh.
As of now, Andrey Rublev remains unsure about turning up for the Round of 32 fixture on Tuesday. After progressing to the second round, he will face Belgium’s Zizou Bergs in the Round of 32, with the timing of the match yet to be decided.
A look at Andrey Rublev’s impressive record at the Monte-Carlo Masters
Historically, Andrey Rublev has enjoyed a considerable amount of success in the tournament. He claimed his first ATP Masters 1000 title there in 2023. He trounced Holger Rune to return home with the trophy. Rublev also made it all the way to the final in 2021 but returned empty-handed courtesy of Stefanos Tsitsipas. In 2024, Rublev’s promising run was cut short by Alexei Popyrin.
Overall, Andrey Rublev has established himself as a dominant figure on dirt courts, lifting the 2020 Hamburg, 2022 Belgrade, and 2022 Gijon titles. He boasts a 65.49% win rate on the surface.
Among his most notable wins, Rublev trounced 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic in the final to lift the title in a three-set thriller. He raced away with the first set, registering a 6-2 win. However, the home favourite bounced back to restore parity in the second with a 7-6 win. In the third and the last set, Rublev turned the tide to bring home the title with a 6-0 victory.
Edited by Riddhiman Sarkar
