Andrey Rublev

When a company is looking for someone to carry its brand, it wants someone with personality, with desire and with a work ethic that matches its own. In Andrey Rublev, HEAD seems to have found the perfect match.

Following in the footsteps of Arthur Ashe, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, Maria Sharapova and the new Italian sensation Jannik Sinner, Rublev has some big shoes to fill. But the Russian is a man on a mission, a player with a crushing forehand, someone not afraid to take risks, utterly dedicated to making the most of his talent and to achieving his goals.

Rublev was first seen on court sporting the colors of the HEAD Gravity at the Monte Carlo Masters 2021, and he will be looking to continue his seemingly inexorable rise toward the top.

It was in 2017 that Rublev first shot to fame when, as a 19-year-old, he beat Grigor Dimitrov and David Goffin on his way to the quarter-finals of the US Open.

But it was the previous year when Rublev made a brave decision, one that changed the course of his career. At 18, the Russian decided to train at the 4Slam Tennis Academy in Barcelona, under the direction of Galo Blanco. It was there that he met his coach, Fernando Vicente, and the two have been inseparable since. In November, 2020, Vicente was voted ATP Coach of the Year.

Blessed with aggressive groundstrokes and an ultra-attacking attitude, Rublev was runner-up at the Next Gen Finals in 2017 and ended that year ranked 39, before hitting a career-high of No 31 in March 2018.

A stress fracture in his back caused him to miss three months in 2018 and a wrist injury put him out of Roland-Garros in 2019. At one stage in early 2019 he had fallen outside the top 100 but ever since he beat Roger Federer in Cincinnati that year, Rublev has not looked back.

After winning his second Tour title in Moscow in 2019, Rublev ended that year ranked No 23 and in 2020, he moved his game up another level, winning five titles – more than any other player – and qualifying for the season-ending ATP Finals for the first time. His title in Rotterdam in March 2021 was the eighth of his career.

Breaking into the top 10 proved what everyone has known about Rublev for a long time; he is going places. Here is a man who works hard, hits the ball hard and tries hard, week in, week out, and yet remains humble, admitting he needs to work on every aspect of his game if he wants to get to the top. Not bad for someone who might just have the best forehand in the game.

Not surprisingly, Rublev has put the same kind of dedication into his choice of racket as he does into how and where to hit the ball. In other words, the ideal fit for HEAD, as Thomas Bischof, the company’s Director of Pro Players and Product Test Management, says.

“(He is a) young, aspiring, very ambitious and success-oriented player who works very meticulously down to the last detail on his racket and tries everything to be 100 per cent satisfied with the product.”

Rublev has been making waves in the sport for a few years now and is looking for the next step, making big runs at Grand Slam events. At HEAD he may just have found the ideal tools for the job.

WORDS BY SIMON CAMBERS