Andrey Rublev admitted ‘I don’t remember behaving worse at a Slam ever’ after he kicked and screamed his way out of the French Open.
The No. 6 seed was beaten 7-6, 6-2, 6-4 by Italian Matteo Arnaldi on Friday and – by no means for the first time in his career – Rublev was the author of his downfall.
After going two breaks down in the second set, the 26-year-old Muscovite smashed his racket twice into the ground and, as he went to sit down for the changeover, kicked the bench three times.
Rublev roared in frustration, smashed his racket, and drove himself to the brink of tears.
After the match, he sat with head bowed and long red hair straggling down over his face, and attempted to explain such needless self-sabotage.
‘Completely disappointed with myself the way I behaved, the way I performed,’ he said. ‘I think it was the first time I ever behaved that bad.
‘The way I behave I put myself completely down, and I give Matteo wings to fly, and he was flying third set unbelievable. It was too late to do something.’
Rublev had a poor start to the clay season but came to Roland Garros with the wind in his sails after winning the Madrid Masters.
‘I was struggling, and then I had a really good result in Madrid. Now I'm playing well again. I feel that I have a good game, and I'm improving. The problem is the head, that today I kill myself, and that's it.’
He tried to explain how things fell apart after he lost the first-set tiebreak and admitted that he ‘tanked’ at the end of the second set. ‘In the tiebreak I had chances, and then second set I started already on emotions.
‘But somehow I was able to break back. Then out of nowhere, again, I collapsed with myself, I got emotional, I lost my serve, and then I lost it completely and basically I almost - almost, no, I tanked the second set, and then it was too late.’
Tennis is a frustrating game – go down to your local courts for evidence of that – and players have to endure its travails alone. But it is difficult to fathom how this articulate, mild-mannered Dr Jekyll can become such a raging Mr Hyde on a tennis court.
Rublev’s incredible hand speed through his shots gives him the power to trouble anyone in the game. But until he can quell the raging tempests that swirl in his mind, his full potential is set to remain sadly unrealized.
In a marked contrast, Rublev’s fellow red-head Jannik Sinner continued his serene progress through the draw with a 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 win over Russian Pavel Kotov.
