“I achieved this joke that we had”: How Alexander Bublik went from nearly retiring to breaking into the Top 10

One of the highlights of the first competition season was the title Alexander Bublik won against Italian Lorenzo Musetti in the Hong Kong Open final. The Kazakh captured his first title of the season—and his fifth in the last 52 weeks—securing his entry into the Top 10 for the first time in his career.

“You never know how many titles you're going to win, and I always say after each one that if it's the last one, then I have to be really happy,” the 28-year-old player said during his press conference. “When you win something on the ATP Tour, when everyone's playing well, it's always a gift. So for me to win another one—my ninth one—and to achieve the top ten here, it's very special.”

A goal that would have seemed impossible at the beginning of 2025, when the Kazakh had a major drop in the rankings and even considered retirement. “I finished very dissatisfied with myself in 2024, even at the beginning of this season. I even thought about retiring because I was afraid of dropping out of the Top 100,” Bublik told Tennis Magazine at the end of November last year. “After Indian Wells, I went to Las Vegas for three days to disconnect, and since then, it was like starting a mission.”

Having aimed to be inside the Top 20 in 2024, Bublik experienced a sharp decline in the rankings after Wimbledon: only two wins in his next 11 matches of the season—and he started 2025 with just two wins in his first 10 matches. Over a period of roughly nine months, Bublik’s record was only 4–17, and disappointment after disappointment made him consider retirement—especially after falling outside the Top 80.

“For me, it's not just another title, it's the first time I enter the Top 10. Hong Kong will always have a special place in my heart because that's when I entered something I never would have imagined,” the new world No. 10 said during the trophy ceremony after beating Musetti. “If you had told me at the beginning of my career or even last April, I probably wouldn't have believed it. I'm being honest with you.”

Things changed for Bublik when he decided to play the Challenger 175 in Phoenix—where he reached the final but lost to Joao Fonseca—and then entered the clay-court swing with slightly more confidence, starting to build momentum. The Kazakh delivered a strong performance at the Madrid Masters, reaching the fourth round—including a win over world No. 8 at the time, Andrey Rublev.

On a surface that had never been comfortable for him, clay gradually brought Bublik back to a high level of tennis. He played the Turin Challenger to regain confidence and ended up winning the title, which became a turning point in his season for accumulating victories.

The following months were simply remarkable: he reached his first Roland Garros quarterfinal, defeating two Top 10 players (De Minaur and Draper) before falling to world No. 1 Jannik Sinner. Weeks later, at the start of the grass-court swing in Halle, he caused a huge surprise by eliminating Sinner in the second round, continuing his run to the final and taking the title after defeating Daniil Medvedev—beating four Top 25 players along the way.

The rest of the year was almost unbeatable: he won three ATP 250 titles (Gstaad, Kitzbühel, and Hangzhou), reached the quarterfinals at the US Open (again losing to Sinner), and made his first appearance in the semifinals of a Masters 1000 at the Paris Masters, eliminated by Felix Auger-Aliassime. By this point, Bublik had entered the Top 15 for the first time. Since Roland Garros, his record was 30–8, finishing the year with six wins over Top 10 players—more than in any other year of his career.

The start of the year set up a potential declaration for Bublik to reach the Top 10 if he secured the title this week. Jack Draper’s injury—keeping him out for months—gave Bublik a chance to take his spot in the rankings. He achieved victories over Van de Zandschulp, Shang, and Giron to reach his first final of the season against Italian Musetti—the tournament’s first seed.

“When you play for the title, which is important and big, then you play for something even bigger—like being in the top ten,” he said during a press conference. “We joked about it throughout my seven years in the top 50. We always joked like, 'Well, imagine if one day I'm going to touch the top ten,' but we never actually thought of how to do it. We were always going with the flow, more on the enjoyment side instead of hard work and dedication.”

“But then things changed when I dropped a bit in the ranking, and I realized that I don't like to be there. It's more demanding, I have to play more, I have to relax less. So then the shift came, and here we are—I achieved this joke that we had. Now, as I said, we need to resettle, talk to my team, and see what's the next visible goal we have.”