Casper Ruud is not just a great tennis player or a bona fide part-time golfer, but he is also multilingual, as his language skills extend beyond his native Norwegian.
Ruud is considered one of the classiest tennis players on tour, and even his fellow pros can attest to this as they voted him to win the Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award in 2022, which he did, ending the long association of this accolade with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.
The 25-year-old was ranked as high as World No. 2 back in 2022 when he reached his second Grand Slam final at the US Open. But Ruud's follow-up season wasn't quite as productive and dropped outside the Top 10.
But he appears to have made a positive start to 2024, reaching his first final in just the second month of the calendar. Ruud did not drop a set en route to the Los Cabos final. Having been to Mexico on multiple occasions in the past, this was his first trip to the resort city of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula.
On Friday, Ruud defeated defending champion Stefanos Tsitsipas in straight sets, but he fell short in his quest to re-enter the Top 10 following defeat in the final. The two-time Roland Garros finalist was beaten by Jordan Thompson of Australia.
The World No. 40 had accumulated a total of at least 10 hours on the match court going into Saturday's late-night final. He was the underdog, and there were fears he would be running on fumes after a nearly four-hour marathon to beat Alexander Zverev in the semis.
Yet, Thompson thrived playing on adrenaline and took down Ruud in two sets. The man from Oslo did his best to salvage the match but lost the decisive second-set tie-break.
But he was classy and gracious in defeat and even delighted those in the stands when he admitted that he spared some words for his Mexican fans in Spanish. You can watch that moment in the video below.
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