Casper Ruud and his father Christian Ruud engaged in a rivalry for a while and it was a healthy competition that drove Casper to improve.
To "defeat" his father as a professional tennis player, Casper had a lot of benchmarks to surpass. Both of Christian's accomplishments—winning 115 matches at the tour level and rising as high as No. 39 in the ATP Rankings —are noteworthy however, it was short-lived competition.
Over the past few years, Casper has stormed beyond those milestones. A first-ever major trophy and the World No. 1 ranking are now within his reach.
“We are just trying to take one match at a time. It's still far away, I think,” said father Christian adding:
“But of course it's nice that it's possible, and Casper has a little bit of motivation with that in mind, because even when he was small, his ultimate goal was to be No. 1 in the world.”
Christian Ruud has been the primary coach of his son for the majority of his life and it's something that's made their bond even stronger:
“I think it is just natural for us. I think we are also more like friends. We have the same hobbies. We play golf together. We watch movies together. We like sometimes have the same hobbies, in a way." said Christian explaining that Ruud seriously commited to tennis at age 13 wanting to see how far he can go:
“I think he really wanted to see how far he can reach. He was already starting to look at Rafa and that was his idol, so he really was into the tennis world and he wanted to be on that center court one day.
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