Casper Ruud had a really strange approach to the start of this year, and it backfired badly, with former player Rennae Stubbs questioning his reasoning.
Casper Ruud tried to have an unconventional offseason before the 2023 season. Due to his commitment to play with Rafael Nadal across South America, the Norwegian opted to skip the typical December offseason but rather keep practicing toward the Australian Open.
The plan was to have an offseason between that event and the North American early spring events, which meant skipping over the indoor stretch in February. It kind of made sense on paper but proved to be a proper disaster as he couldn't find his tennis at all.
While he eventually found his tennis, he never quite got right in the entire season, struggling for much of the year and finishing with a 37-23 record. It's way off from the 50+ win season he had in the years before that, and according to Stubbs, it's all because of the preseason, as she analyzed it on her Rennae Stubbs Tennis Podcast.
What Casper Ruud did, I think that really f****d him up. Last year when he kept playing those exhos with Nadal like fine, he's like your idol and you want to go and you probably get paid millions of dollars to go do all of that but you know then he didn't play after that and then he was like 'Oh my god I'm gonna go to the tournament and i'm gonna play at the Australian Open'. It's like he needed a break.
Ruud quickly understood that he had made a mistake and joked about it a few times during the season, promising not to do it again. As you can imagine, he kept his word and is currently having a proper offseason and break.
Calendar scheduling is so important which is why some of the greatest ever, like Novak Djokovic, started picking their spots in their 20s. That's what Ruud needs to do as well.
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