A year ago this week, Andrey Rublev suffered a fate that had felt inevitable for some time. He was disqualified from a match for completely losing his cool.

Rublev, 27 and the men’s world No. 9, is prone to fits of self-flagellation — often hammering at his body with his racket. On this occasion though, it was a line judge who felt the full force of Rublev’s ire. Angered by what he felt was a bad call at a crucial moment of his Dubai Tennis Championships semifinal against Alexander Bublik, Rublev screamed in the face of the line judge and was alleged to have used a Russian expletive. Rublev was defaulted from the match, and was stripped of his prize money and ranking points from the tournament. These were later returned on appeal, but it was a challenging episode for Rublev — one of many last year.

Rublev returns to Dubai this week with an altogether different mindset. He is fresh from winning the Qatar Open in Doha by beating Jack Draper in three sets, and believes he is in a better place.

“Sometimes you learn the most from the worst cases,” Rublev said in a recent interview about his experience in Dubai last year.

Things got worse for Rublev after that. In May, he battled through an initially undiagnosed throat abscess that affected his breathing and swallowing to win the Madrid Open, a Masters 1,000 event one rung below the Grand Slams. He was reduced to eating baby food and the physical and emotional effort of that title soon took their toll.

Just over three weeks later, Rublev lost to Matteo Arnaldi in the third round of the French Open. The match became an excruciating display of self-flagellation. Rublev smashed his racket, kicked furniture around the court and repeatedly hit his leg with his racket and his face with his hand, saying afterwards that he had never behaved so badly at a Grand Slam. He was given two warnings during the match for unsportsmanlike conduct and even admitted afterwards to “tanking” the second set — tennis speak for giving up. He frequently looked close to tears during the match.

A few weeks later, Rublev lost in the first round of Wimbledon, to Francisco Comesana, who was ranked No. 122 and had never won a match on the ATP tour.

“I could not take it anymore. And I exploded after Wimbledon completely.” Rublev says. “I was not happy with myself, depressed.”

This is how Rublev rebuilt himself and his career, and why he likens how he feels about his tennis this year to someone who has just bought a new car.

His on-court behaviour may be extreme, but Rublev’s frustration with tennis is very relatable to many. Tennis is an infuriating sport, and most players, amateur or professional, will have experienced flashes of self-loathing. One coach recalled noting down some of the insults players were dishing out to themselves mid-practice match, before sharing them with the shocked individuals once the session was over.

Rublev is also recognisable as someone whose off-court persona, where he is calm, thoughtful and introspective, is so at odds with his behaviour on it. Tuesday marks three years since Rublev wrote ‘No War Please’ on a camera lens after reaching the final in Dubai, the day after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He has repeatedly called for peace since.

The topline summary of Rublev’s career offers some clues as to why he appears permanently wound up. He has spent close to 250 weeks in the world’s top 10 and has reached 10 Grand Slam quarterfinals, taking in all four of the majors. He lost all 10, dating back eight years to the 2017 U.S. Open. On eight occasions, he lost to a higher-ranked player; though his forehand can be potent, Rublev lacks the devastating single shot that can be the difference between getting to the latter stages of a slam and winning one.

Rublev has tended to find being kind to himself difficult. “Yeah, that’s my problem,” he says. “But it’s not that difficult to be less hard on yourself. Before I wasn’t realising this, how it looks from the outside.”

The Dubai incident against Alexander Bublik saw Andrey Rublev default from their semifinal. (Christopher Pike / Getty Images)

Not being so hard on himself is something Rublev is trying to do this year. The flashes of self-admonishment will always be there — as he said in a news conference last week, “I’m still getting frustrated, I’m still getting p***ed” — but it was reassuring to see him not being quite so hard on himself during the Doha quarterfinal against Alex de Minaur, when he missed seven match points before finally battling through after blowing a 5-2 lead in the final set. At one change of ends, Rublev was even laughing to himself and closing his eyes to try to stay calm. He could be seen breathing carefully while sitting down during his semifinal win over Felix Auger-Aliassime too.

After beating Draper in the final, Rublev told the ATP website: “I played at a good level. In some moments, I was really good mentally and didn’t let frustration get over me. As soon as I was frustrated, I was able to restart again and I was able to play at the same intensity. That’s the most important thing.”

Rublev puts part of his shift in mentality down to learning lessons from last year. “I’m looking at it as a positive because I learned a lot of things that I hope I will use on court,” he said in the interview in January while discussing the Dubai default and his other struggles.

“I’m a bit more mature. I’m still a kid, but a bit less. If you do the right analysis, you learn the most from the worst things.

“Sometimes when some bad things happen people get offended. They think, ‘I’m unlucky, this thing happened to me. Or it’s like bad luck.’ They try to find an excuse. But if you try to put away the excuse and try not to lie to yourself and to realize what can you learn from this or what is happening, then of course you get the biggest lesson out of it.

“It gave me a lot of explanations for many things that I have done in the worst way.”

His heroic title win in Madrid was sandwiched between an excruciating flurry of racket smashes at the Barcelona Open and the self-described “tanking” at Roland Garros. In the Spanish capital, Rublev said that his reserves were so depleted that he didn’t have the energy for self-flagellation. “I had no energy and no power to do anything else besides just to focus on the game. I had no energy to complain today,” he said after beating Carlos Alcaraz, himself returning from injury, in the quarterfinals. Rublev was the only player to beat both Alcaraz and world No. 1 Jannik Sinner in 2024, defeating the latter at the Canada Open in Montreal.

Perhaps inevitably, Rublev suffered badly following his battle against ill health to win the Madrid title. “That part of the season was the worst,” he said. “The toughest moment of my kind of life. (It’s like) your brain is completely finished. Those months, it didn’t matter if I was playing or not playing, I was feeling like I’m … surviving. Hit or run non-stop, 24 hours, and then I could not take it anymore.

“I exploded after Wimbledon completely. And then with some help, I started feeling much better and I was able to kind of recover the second part of the season. So I’m trying to kind of move in that way to be completely, let’s say, free inside.”

Part of the help Rublev refers to is starting to work with a psychologist. He also came off anti-depression tablets, which he said has made a big difference, and he has benefited from speaking to compatriot and former world No. 1 Marat Safin.

At the end of 2024, Rublev started to understand himself a bit better. He did enough to qualify for the year-end ATP Finals for the world’s eight best players for the fifth straight year, after Novak Djokovic withdrew. There were still difficult moments: during a defeat to Francisco Cerundolo at the Paris Masters 1,000, Rublev screamed at the crowd and slammed his racket against his knee seven times, drawing blood.

“Everything that was happening, illness, the surgery (to save a testicle) was happening because of the way I was feeling,” he said. “So it was not like an unlucky situation. It’s just because I put myself in that situation that I start to have those things. I realized also some things that I needed to realize. It was just with myself. I was not happy with myself, depressed.

“Now I’m more realistic. I’m a couple of years in the top 10. How can I say that I’m a bad player? I have to be grateful for that. How can I win big titles if I’m the one who is playing and I don’t believe in myself?

“The other players think that they can win them. So you start with yourself first.”

Rublev’s win in Qatar was a boost, after his first-round defeat to Brazilian rising star Joao Fonseca at the Australian Open in January. During a match in which Fonseca was inspired at the biggest moments, Rublev acknowledged in his body language that he was losing to an opponent who was better on the day. In a similar reaction to his match against De Minaur in Doha, Rublev laughed at the net, this time giggling at the absurdity of another super-talented player coming for the titles he wants so badly.

Rublev congratulates Joao Fonseca for his win in Melbourne. (Asanka Brendon Ratnayake / Associated Press)

His changed mindset means Rublev is “super excited” for what comes next. “Some things in my life, some things in tennis, I never look at that from this angle before.

“It’s like, let’s say you’re excited about a new car. It’s like I’m going to test it, see how’s it going to feel. Those are the kind of feelings I’m having now. With the different angles of understanding myself, thinking: how will it affect my tennis?”

(Top photo: Christopher Pike / Getty Images)