In the 21st century, the ATP Tour saw many successful tennis players from not-so-traditional tennis countries. Greece's Stefanos Tsitsipas is one of them, Denmark's Holger Rune is another one, and Casper Ruud, who was born in Oslo, Norway, on December 22nd, 1998, is also one of them.
Coming from Norway, it was expected that Ruud might become a professional athlete in his life, but winter sports such as skiing, biathlon, or cross-country may have been more expected choices.
However, his father, Christian Ruud, was the most successful Norwegian tennis player, who reached a career-high 39th place in the ATP Rankings. Therefore, when Casper took on tennis early on in his life, it wasn't a surprise.
Ruud is one of the the players who were part of Rafael Nadal's tennis academy, but the Norwegian didn't enjoy a lot of success in his career early on. He didn't record any significant results at any of the majors, but still, he managed to climb to the world no. 1 spot in the junior rankings.
In 2016, he received a Chengdu Open wild card, where he made his professional debut. Ruud's career has since been growing slowly but steadily. He played a few ATP 250 finals in 2019 and 2020, and in 2021, he became known as an ATP 250 specialist, having won five tournaments of such category, four of which were on clay.
In 2022, Ruud's success also extended beyond the ATP 250 level when he played his first ATP Masters 1000 final against Carlos Alcaraz at the Miami Open, but also his first Grand Slam final against Rafael Nadal at the Roland Garros.
Later in the same season, Ruud played his second major final, in which he had a chance also to reach the world no. 1 spot, but he was denied the chance by Carlos Alcaraz in the 2022 US Open final.
