Casper Ruud names the three ATP players he faced in 2024 who he felt completely outmatched by

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Casper Ruud has made a positive start to his new season after beating Tomas Machac at the 2025 United Cup.

Ruud just played doubles with Nick Kyrgios at the World Tennis League, but now his focus is on another team event in the United Cup.

The 12-time ATP Tour champion emerged victorious from his two-hour, 55-minute clash with Machac, although the Czech Republic did go on to beat Norway in Sydney.

Ruud ended 2024 ranked sixth in the ATP Tour list, having clinched two titles to take his career total to 12.

Norwegian star Ruud will be using the United Cup to prepare for the 2025 Australian Open, which gets underway in Melbourne in mid-January.

The three ATP players Casper Ruud felt outmatched by

He has now shared his undertakings in the recent off-season, as well as looking back on his efforts in recent times.

“Having fun, going for some crazy shots, trying to find what’s within myself,” Ruud told the ATP Tour website. “Not just ripping balls, but how much power I can generate. So [I was] overplaying a little bit, just to see.

“I think that when I played players like [Jannik] Sinner and [Carlos] Alcaraz and a little bit Sascha [Zverev] last year, I felt like they had a little bit of an extra gear that I wasn’t able to hang with.

READ MORE: Casper Ruud suggests who he thinks had the more impressive season out of Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz

“So [I was] trying to find what we call the seventh or eighth gear, because not many players have it. [I was] trying to see if I have it, and it’s been fun, but also challenging.

“The older guys that are now kind of one by one, unfortunately of course, retiring, they played more of a traditional style of tennis.

“The Spanish, South American players did more playing with bigger margins and not at the same tempo Sinner has been playing the last year.

“You can ask yourself, ‘What does Sinner do so well?’ Well, he rips almost every ball he gets, and he doesn’t do errors. That’s the ideal way of playing tennis. Usually, back in the day, if you had someone ripping, there would come more errors out of the racket.

“So if you can play at that speed and that tempo and not do errors, or at least unforced errors, that’s as good as you can play.

“You didn’t feel so rushed or stressed when you played the players compared to what you feel when, particularly, you play Jannik or Carlos, because you know that if you don’t hit deep, if you don’t hit a strong shot, somewhat of a missile is coming back at you.

“They’ve taken that to a little bit of a new level, I think. And of course, they’re still young, and they still want to improve, but the level they produced last year was, for me, very, very impressive.”

Where has Casper Ruud won his 12 ATP Tour titles?

Ruud can be very proud of his efforts in 2024, with only the aforementioned star trio and Taylor Fritz and Daniil Medvedev ahead of him in the rankings.

He impressed with 51 wins and 25 losses, with titles arriving in Geneva and Barcelona, both on outdoor clay.

READ MORE: Casper Ruud calls for change with Olympic tennis after being impacted by ‘strange’ rule in Paris

But the Norwegian will be keen to get back to the levels he has previously reached, having won five titles in 2021.

He also made it all the way to number two in the ATP rankings back in 2022, a year in which he reached the finals of the French Open and US Open.

Another Grand Slam heartache went his way the following year, with Ruud losing the 2023 French Open final.

The 26-year-old certainly knows what it means to lose to the very best, having lost to Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in Paris and Alcaraz in New York.