The Riddle of the Ruud-Rublev Reversal

Andrey Rublev and Casper Ruud

The story of the the 2024 ATP Tour Finals was the dominance of Jannik Sinner. I’ll refer you to what I wrote after the Australian Open: Yes, Jannik Sinner Really Is This Good. He just passed the 2,300 Elo threshold, becoming only the 12th man since Rod Laver to do so. When I update the Tennis 128 in a few weeks, he’ll be on it.

For all that, I’m preoccupied with something else. On the final day of round robin play, Casper Ruud beat Andrey Rublev to secure a place in the semi-finals. It was their eighth meeting and the Norwegian’s third victory:

Notice anything odd? Take away the unfinished Australian Open tilt, and the head-to-head breaks down precisely on surface lines. Rublev has won all four encounters on clay, while Ruud has run the table on hard courts. Not just any hard courts: indoors, at the Tour Finals.

We can look to external factors to explain some of the individual results. Casper had more at stake on Friday than the Russian did, with a chance to qualify for the final four. Rublev is older and broke through correspondingly earlier, so he was the natural favorite in their early meetings. Injuries and illness may have influenced another outcome or two, even aside from the retirement in Melbourne.

Still: 0-3 in completed matches for the ball-basher on hard courts, and 0-4 for the Roland Garros finalist on clay. Something’s going on here.

Not so fast

Rublev, to be fair, is hardly a fast-court specialist. His first tour-level title came on dirt in Umag, and he picked up a Masters crown last year in Monte Carlo, on one of the circuit’s slowest surfaces. The Russian’s forehand is a weapon in any conditions, and slow courts can disguise some of his weaknesses.

On the other hand, however much Rublev likes the dirt, Ruud likes it more. Earlier this year, I quantified the notion of “surface sensitivity,” the degree to which a player’s results are influenced by court speed. Rublev scored at -2.2, indicating that he does better on slower surfaces, a bit more so than the typical tour regular. Casper was considerably further down the list, at -5.0. The rating tells us that he’s more receptive to slow courts than Pablo Carreno Busta or Jaume Munar. He’s grades about the same as Diego Schwartzman.

Maybe the oddball head-to-head is a quirk of when the pair have met? Not all hard courts play fast, and not all clay behaves like the crushed brick at Roland Garros. Here are the venues for the seven completed meetings, along with my ace-based surface speed rating for each. Ratings above 1 are faster than average, below 1 are slower:

Year  Tournament   Winner  Speed  
2024  Tour Finals  Ruud     1.36  
2023  Bastad       Rublev   0.86  
2022  Tour Finals  Ruud     1.50  
2021  Tour Finals  Ruud     1.51  
2021  Monte Carlo  Rublev   0.54  
2020  Hamburg      Rublev   0.52  
2019  Hamburg      Rublev   0.74

Hypothesis denied! The 2021 and 2022 Tour Finals were the fastest conditions of their respective years, while Monte Carlo was the slowest of the entire 2021 season. Last year’s Bastad surface was fairly neutral for a clay court, but the rest of the Ruud-Rublev showdowns took place on fast hard courts or slow clay.

We could always mark down a string of seven surface-confounding results to luck, especially when both players are capable in all conditions. But it would be far more satisfying to find an explanation that tells us something about the players and their particular skills.

Stoppable

We don’t have to look far. Here are Casper’s win rates on first and second serve points against Rublev, separated by surface:

Surface  1st W%  2nd W%  
Clay      56.8%   48.4%  
Hard      72.7%   50.7%

Everybody wins fewer first serve points on clay than on hard courts, but not like this. The average gap for top-50 players in 2024 is four percentage points–not sixteen. At tour level against the entire field, Ruud has shown an even smaller difference, winning 73.1% of hard-court first-serve points against 71.2% of those on clay.

Rublev is not a brilliant returner. He’s a serviceable one with tactics to match. He often struggles to get first serves back in play. On second serve, he’s unafraid to unleash his weapons, accepting some errors in exchange for tilting other points in his favor. On clay, he’s able to turn a few more first serves into rally openers. In 2024, his gap between clay and hard-court first-serve return points won was bigger than average. But not nearly as wide as it is against Casper.

When it works…

Ruud, like many men who have developed into strong clay-courters, doesn’t have a monster serve. He can place it, he can disguise it, and he knows how to play behind it. On a fast hard court, those skills–combined with a bit more risk-taking–can result in numbers that look more like those of a big server. Against Rublev last week, he won just shy of 80% of his serve points, supported by 15 aces.

When the Norwegian is hitting corners and the ball is skimming off a court like the speedy one in Turin, Rublev is helpless. Over his career, according to the nearly 200 matches logged by the Match Charting Project, he puts 58% of first serves back in play. Against Casper on Friday, he didn’t manage 50%–a repeat of his performance on the same court two years earlier.

Rublev’s first-serve-return struggles on hard court contrast with how he feasts on Ruud’s serve on clay. The next table shows the rate at which the Russian puts Casper’s first serves in play, as well as his win percentage when he does so:

Match                Result  1st: RiP%  RiP W%  
2024 Tour Finals RR       L      46.9%   43.3%  
2023 Bastad F             W      64.6%   61.3%  
2022 Tour Finals SF       L      45.7%   50.0%  
2021 Tour Finals RR       L      67.5%   51.9%  
2021 Monte Carlo SF       W      84.4%   59.3%  
2020 Hamburg SF           W      91.4%   59.4%

The exception to the rule here is the 2021 Tour Finals match, which ended in a third-set tiebreak. It was the closest either man has come to securing one of the matches he “should” have won. Rublev won 52.9% of total points, but Ruud served his way out of just enough jams to come through.

On the very slow Monte Carlo and Hamburg courts, Rublev’s ability to handle the Norwegian’s first serve meant that Ruud was left with no edge whatsoever. Casper might be the superior baseliner, but he started too many points at a disadvantage. The picture might look different if they played on slow clay today, since Ruud is stronger and tactically savvier on serve. But I imagine it would still be a struggle, one in which few of Casper’s service games would sail by quickly.

Pundits like to say that tennis is a game of matchups. They often overstate their case: The better player (by ranking, or Elo rating, or whatever) usually wins. When they don’t, it isn’t always because of some quirk in the head-to-head. With Rublev and Ruud, though, such a quirk dictates the results. Few men are able to erase Rublev’s advantage on a hard court as much as the Norwegian can. Casper’s first serve is rarely so ineffectual as when the Russian is waiting for it on dirt. Ruud is set for another big European clay swing next year–so long as his buddy Andrey lands in the other half of the draw.

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