Casper Ruud has made an honest admission about his tennis which has been impacted by the likes of Jannik Sinner.
Ruud admitted 2025 was not the season he was hoping for, despite winning the biggest title of his career at the Madrid Open.
The Norwegian has had a mixed start to the 2026 season, with Ruud beating Alex de Minaur at the United Cup, before losing to Jakub Mensik.
Ruud recently admitted he got something wrong about tennis, and he has now spoken about how the sport has changed since his first ATP Tour event in 2016.
Casper Ruud comments on how tennis has changed since he arrived on the ATP Tour
After kicking off his 2026 season at the United Cup, Ruud has headed to New Zealand for the ASB Classic.
Ahead of the ATP 250 tournament in Auckland getting underway, Ruud spoke to media in his pre-tournament press conference.
In this press conference, Ruud was asked about how he has tried to improve his game, before he went on to explain about how much tennis has changed in his 10 years on the ATP Tour.
The three-time Grand Slam finalist then pointed out how younger players are now changing the sport, with Ruud naming both Sinner, Joao Fonseca and Mensik when speaking about how he has studied younger players to try and adapt his own game.
“Well, I mean it’s what we see and what I see on court is that there are a lot of young guys these days that are coming and that are playing a bit different type of tennis to when I kind of came on tour myself,” said Ruud.
“Obviously there was a big change in the kind of generation of tennis players, if we think of the last seven to eight years, I remember my first main draw on the ATP Tour back in 2016, so it’s 10 years already, and I remember playing Viktor Troicki and he was part of this generation of you know, with him and everyone from Novak [Djokovic] and Rafa [Nadal], and in-between there with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Tomas Berdych, David Ferrer, and all those guys that I looked up to and watching a lot on TV.
“And then you have this newer generation that consists of kind of let’s take Sinner as kind of the oldest one and then you can go down to maybe Fonseca which is the youngest one, and in-between that age group of five to six years they really rip the ball and play a little bit different style of tennis and something I’ve needed to get used to.
“And they not only have one big shot, they typically have two big shots, both the forehand and backhand are great. I mean if you look at these players, you know I lost last week to Mensik at the United Cup, and he has a great serve, hits the backhand hard from both sides and you see it more and more, and seeing how the game has changed has made me realise that I need to change my game a little.
“So, like you asked I mean it was a long answer but trying to look for improvements, I’ve been studying a lot of the younger guys over the last recent weeks and months to see how my game needs to develop and change in order to handle their type of tennis.”
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Casper Ruud responds when asked if he now feels like a veteran on the ATP Tour
After making these remarks about modern day tennis, Ruud was asked a follow-up question relating to whether he now considers himself as a veteran on the ATP Tour.
Ruud dismissed suggestions of him being old just yet, and spoke about how he believes he could now be entering the prime of his career.
“I feel like I’m somewhere in between now, I think I’m 27, I just turned 27 in December so I don’t feel old at all, but in tennis terms like I said 10 years ago I made my debut on the ATP Tour so we are starting to talk about decades here which sounds a little scary but that’s how it goes,” answered Ruud.
“So, you have older guys than me and you have younger guys than me, so I’m kind of in between now and I feel like the next five years of my career can still be, hopefully in more, but I see no reason why the next five years cannot be as good as the last five years.
“And I hope that I’m kind of entering my prime from being around 26/27 to 30/33, I will consider those years to hopefully be my best years and of course at this point in my career I have achieved some big things, but there are still many more things I wish to achieve and have longevity in my career.”
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Ruud will be hoping that he can showcase this at the ASB Classic, where he has never won a match in his three previous appearances.
As the second seed, Ruud receives a bye to the second round and will play the winner of the match between Fabian Marozsan and defending champion Gael Monfils, who will be retiring this year.
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