"I don't think I'll do what I did in 2022 again": Ruud admits no pre-season break has affected his form

Casper Ruud skipped the offseason in 2022 by opting to take part in an exhibition tour with Nadal across South America and he won't be doing that again.

Ruud has played abysmal this year losing many matches in many consecutive events. He's yet to find his proper tennis and many have pointed to his decision to skip the offseason as the culprit behind his poor play. Ruud opted to have his 'offseason' after the Australian Open taking close to a month off but it didn't work as intended as his tennis is still poor.

He's hoping that a return to clay finally might change his fortunes but he's also come around on the fact that his preparation for this year was wrong. He's in Estoril to get his clay season going early and he admitted that his plans didn't work out the way he thought but he's feeling better now:

"My season is naturally not going the way I would like. If that was because of my second pre-season in February and the fact that I played all those exhibitions with Nadal, I can't guarantee it. We will never know."

He also confirmed that he won't be doing that again:

"I don't think I'll do what I did in 2022 again in 2023, but it hasn't been easy to manage my schedule, because I've been playing in the ATP Finals (I went to the semi-finals in 2021 and the final in 2022) and then the United Cup starts early too much for me."