What exactly is the limit of Casper Ruud’s game? The Norwegian wants to find out.
Players have different priorities during the offseason specific to their own games and needs. The No. 6 player in the PIF ATP Rankings wanted to test what he is capable of.
“Having fun, going for some crazy shots, trying to find what's within myself. Not just ripping balls, but how much power I can generate. So [I was] overplaying a little bit, just to see,” Ruud told ATPTour.com. “I think that when I played players like [Jannik] Sinner and [Carlos] Alcaraz and a little bit Sascha [Zverev] last year, I felt like they had a little bit of an extra gear that I wasn't able to hang with. So [I was] trying to find what we call the seventh or eighth gear, because not many players have it.
“[I was] trying to see if I have it, and it's been fun, but also challenging.”
This is not a radical change for Ruud. At the 2023 US Open, he lost in the second round to Zhang Zhizhen. The Norwegian felt overpowered and controlled by the Chinese player, leaving him feeling that something had to change.
From that moment on, Ruud began working on playing more aggressively and with rallies on his racquet. That helped him return to the Nitto ATP Finals in 2024, defeating Carlos Alcaraz and Andrey Rublev to reach the semi-finals at the season finale.
More recently, the 26-year-old thought about the landscape of the game today. Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz split the four Grand Slam titles in 2024. How do they play the sport?
“The older guys that are now kind of one by one, unfortunately of course, retiring, they played more of a traditional style of tennis. The Spanish, South American players did more playing with bigger margins and not at the same tempo Sinner has been playing the last year,” Ruud said. “You can ask yourself, 'What does Sinner do so well?' Well, he rips almost every ball he gets, and he doesn't do errors. That's the ideal way of playing tennis.
“Usually, back in the day, if you had someone ripping, there would come more errors out of the racquet. So if you can play at that speed and that tempo and not do errors, or at least unforced errors, that's as good as you can play.”
Ruud feels that when he first surged onto the ATP Tour, there were more possibilities to build up rallies. He was not as rushed during points.
“You didn't feel so rushed or stressed when you played the players compared to what you feel when, particularly, you play Jannik or Carlos, because you know that if you don't hit deep, if you don't hit a strong shot, somewhat of a missile is coming back at you,” Ruud said. “They've taken that to a little bit of a new level, I think. And of course, they're still young, and they still want to improve, but the level they produced last year was, for me, very, very impressive.”
Ruud works hard in the fitness centre at the United Cup in Sydney. Photo: Peter Staples/ATP Tour.
Like fans around the world, Ruud is interested in following the growth of players including World No. 1 Sinner and the youngest player to join the ATP No. 1 Club, Alcaraz.
“But you also want to try to beat them and hang with them. So that's why it was nice with a little time in the offseason to see for myself, how fast can I actually play when I really let loose and don't think that I'm in a match, or just going a little extra for the shots,” Ruud said. “And if you're increasing your shots by 10 kilometers per hour from the baseline, but you end up doing 70 per cent more errors, it's no point.
“You need to hit it inside [the court] as well. You can hit it as hard as you want, but if it goes out two out of every three shots, it's no point. You need to feel comfortable and they've found that in their game. I hope I can as well.”
Ruud focussed a lot on the physical side of his game, on his fitness. He suffered from “a few illnesses” in the second half of the season that cost him in that department.
“It took a while to regain and even now it was time to build. But it was also a long year with a lot of matches,” Ruud said. “I think [it was important to] get ready for hopefully another season with many matches, because that means you're doing well, and if you need to play a lot of matches, it means you're also winning. So I think that this was the only time with three, four weeks with no matches that you could push yourself.”
That fitness work paid off for the 12-time ATP Tour titlist, who made a positive start to his season at the United Cup Sunday in a two-hour, 55-minute victory against Tomas Machac.
“If you get the year off to a good start, it helps. It gives you confidence. So even just a match win like today can be important for the rest of the stay here in Sydney, but also the rest of the trip in Melbourne, the Australian Open,” Ruud said. “It was a nice win today. Even though the year finished pretty good at [the] Nitto [ATP Finals], it was a little bit of a struggle for me winning matches. So every match I can win here is nice and confidence-boosting.”
