"I don't know how the players met all the stars" - Superfan Rublev unable to secure meeting with Harry Styles in New York
ATP
Andrey Rublev made the most of his time in New York before the start of the US Open, attending three shows at Madison Square Garden; twice going to see Harry Styles’ Love On Tour concert and once to see Twenty One Pilots.
The ninth seed, who advanced to the third round on Thursday with a straight-sets win over Kwon Soonwoo, once joined a cover band to make a music video of a One Direction song and it appears his love for Harry Styles has grown since then.
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“I went Monday and Friday to Harry Styles, and Tuesday to Twenty Pilots. I would have liked to go to Twenty Pilots again but they only performed one time,” he said.
Did he get to meet Harry Styles on either visit to MSG?
“No, they don’t do those things for me,” laughed Rublev, referring to the ATP.
“I don’t know how all the players they met all the stars. You can’t imagine, I asked once to go to an NBA game in Miami and they gave me the last, last row at the top. And I think I was top 10 at the time.
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“And then I see all the players, Zverev, Sonego, Berrettini, Ruud, all of them in the first row, taking pics with all the stars and I say, ‘How does that work?’ And I still want to know how that works.”
Growing up in a household where soccer was king, my earliest memories are filled with chants from packed stadiums and the rhythm of a ball being passed across neighborhood streets. But somewhere along the way, the quiet elegance and raw emotion of tennis pulled me in. What began as a curiosity became a lifelong passion; not just for the sport itself, but for the stories it tells: of grit, of heartbreak, of improbable comebacks and human resilience.
As a tennis writer, I bring the observational lens of someone who didn’t grow up in the sport, but fell in love with it as an outsider; a perspective that lets me see both its technical beauty and its emotional depth. Over the years working with TennisUpToDate, I’ve had the privilege of reaching more than 3.5 million readers worldwide, with one of my features ranking among the site’s top three articles.
With a background in storytelling and a creative mind always searching for meaning beyond the scoreboard, I aim to craft narratives that go deeper than results and rankings. Whether it’s a rising star breaking through or a veteran fighting off Father Time, I try to capture the heartbeat behind the headlines.
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