Casper Ruud has spoken out about his poor start to the season, but remains philosophical and grounded about what this means in the context of his career.
The Norwegian enjoyed a stellar breakthrough season last year, making two Grand Slam finals and surging as high as No. 2 in the world at one point. However, his progress has been halted by an alarming drop off in form so far this season, with the current World No. 3 struggling for any sort of form or consistency.
There was a brief respite from the bad run, with Ruud taking the title in Estoril just over a week ago. But then followed a bitterly disappointing loss to Jan-Lennard Struff in the third round of the Monte-Carlo Masters event last week.
This ended Ruud's nine match winning streak on his favoured surface and leaves many questions unanswered for last year's French Open runner-up as the clay court season gets under way in earnest.
It's frustrating, but at the same time, I sort of, not going to say that I predicted that it was going to happen, but I think I've been pretty honest with myself and realizing that your whole career is not going to be joyful ride. There will be some downs and hopefully more ups than downs, but for sure the downs will come.
And I haven't really experienced a very, very big down period in my career or in my tennis life ever. And not going to say that the last months have been that, but it has not been what I wanted to try to achieve, but hopefully, I can sort of try to shake that off. We are on a new surface and it's sort of like a new beginning in a way you can think that way.
0 Comments