NextGen star Andrey Rublev hints at mental health issues during injury rehab in revealing interview

Russian star Andrey Rublev suffered a stress fracture to his back during the 2018 season and has subsequently revealed how difficult he found the mental side of not being able to playing during his rehabilitation

Andrey Rublev had reached his highest ranking of 31 in the world early in the 2018 season when he was suddenly diagnosed with a stress fracture of the lower back soon after the Monte Carlo Masters. This lead to 3 months of lay off with compete rest for the first 2 months. In a brutally honest post on the ‘Behind The Racquet‘ series he opens up about how difficult he found this period of his career.

Rublev said, “It was last year when I sadly had a stress fracture in my lower back. It kept me out of competition for three months. It was an incredibly tough time for me which led to some depression.” He went on to say, “I was born to compete and now I couldn’t and that’s where moments of depression came from. I would try to not keep up with any results from tournaments. Any time I did, by accident, it would make me really upset to see other players doing something I couldn’t at the time. While I began to watch matches I almost got that same feeling of competition that I would get from playing, but then it would be overtaken by sadness when I knew it would be some time until I could do it again.”

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“It was last year when I sadly had a stress fracture in my lower back. It kept me out of competition for three months. It was an incredibly tough time for me which led to some depression. Since the injury was in my back I wasn’t allowed to do anything for the first two months. I had more free time than I ever had and I didn’t know what to do with it all. I missed the sport so much and all I wanted to do was compete. I clearly remember nothing else at the time was making me happy. It truly was one of the toughest moments of my career. I was born to compete and now I couldn’t and that’s where moments of depression came from. I would try to not keep up with any results from tournaments. Any time I did, by accident, it would make me really upset to see other players doing something I couldn’t at the time. I am here at home doing nothing while they are doing their best and improving. I had to continue to wait for the bone to heal to do even a little rehab. I just wanted to do a little fitness but it was killing me that there was absolutely nothing I could do. While I began to watch matches I almost got that same feeling of competition that I would get from playing, but then it would be overtaken by sadness when I knew it would be some time until I could do it again. There were definitely moments when I would be doing minor rehab and forget all these problems but it would always come back. I would watch a match and realize just how long the road to recovery is and how much longer until I am back on court. It made me want to be back on court more than anything.”

A post shared by Behind The Racquet (@behindtheracquet) on Jul 25, 2019 at 3:00pm PDT

Andrey Rublev is now ranked 78 in the world and holds a 9-9 win/loss record on the ATP main tour in 2019. In 2018 he reached the semi finals of the ATP Next Generation tournament which is open to the best performing players under the age of 21. Rublev’s only career title on the ATP was the Umag clay court event in Croatia in 2017.

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