Andrey Rublev arrived in Moscow in good spirits hoping to secure another trophy on his native soil. The Kremlin Cup is an event Rublev was looking forward to for a while but his run at the event did not feature the desired outcome. The Russian faced Adrien Mannarino and be cruising early winning the first set. He would lose the next two crashing out of the event where he was the number one seed.
Later in the day, he teamed up with Karen Khachanov to play the doubles and after losing that match Rublev talked to the media. When asked whether his singles match affected his performance in the doubles he said:
“Oh for sure [it affected me]. I couldn’t play doubles at all. It was played by Karen on his own. I was completely devastated, emotionless, depressed and in bad thoughts. I pulled everything down, and Karen pulled it out.”
Despite the upsetting losses Rublev was still able to string together a very good 2021 where he won several titles as well as improved his ranking overall. He will also feature at the ATP Finals which is another milestone. The Russian recently also opened up about the need to improve his mental part saying:
“For now, I would say the mental part. I think this is the main [thing] in my case, because the players who are better than me, they know how to manage all these moments much better than me."