Ruusuvuori, the Finnish “Latin” challenges Jannik

Emil Ruusuvuori will be Jannik Sinner’s opponent at the ATP 500 in Washington. The Finn defeated Indian Prajnesh Gunneswaran 26 61 61, claiming his fifth comeback win of the season.

Two precedents with the South Tyrolean, beaten in the Challenger of Bendigo in 2020 and victorious in his eighth final in a Masters 1000, in Miami where he would have reached his first final in this category of tournaments. The following is an adaptation of Emil Ruusuvuori’s profile first published on the eve of the Miami challenge.

Finland has discovered Jarko Nieminen’s heir. His name is Emil Ruusuviori, and he started playing by chance. His first teacher, who had seen him play badminton with his mother, suggested it to him.

For eight years, Ruusuvuori has had an Italian coach. In fact, Federico Ricci follows him who co-founded the Jarkko Nieminen academy, closed for a few years.

Ricci made him study the greats, to bring him closer to his great goals. He wants to win a Grand Slam, said Ruusuvuori, a hockey fan and fascinated by the autobiography of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who is second to none in terms of ambition mixed with brazen egotism. During the lockdown, the Italian coach showed him the games of past champions, Agassi-Sampras at the 2001 US Open, four tiebreaks without break, or Marat Safin’s victory over Roger Federer in the 2005 Australian Open semifinal. ” We looked at what those champions were doing to try to identify two or three points to add to my game, “Ruusuvuori told ATP.

“Emil has always been used to playing with his feet on the bottom line, commanding the exchange” Ricci explained to Alessandro Nizegorodcew for SuperTennis, “but doing it against the first in the world is obviously much more complicated. We therefore worked a lot on the depth of the shots and on managing the position in the pitch. The goal is to stay close to the pitch even against the top players ”.

Raise your hand if you’re into the next round ?????@TennysSandgren, @EmilRuusuvuori & Brandon Nakashima advance.#CitiOpen pic.twitter.com/4egDJv7VcC

— Citi Open (@CitiOpen) August 3, 2021

The Finn has always had very good hand-eye coordination. Already at the age of five, when he surprised his first teacher who saw him playing badminton with his mother. He also developed it playing drums, a hobby he shares with Jim Courier for which this skill is a necessary prerequisite.

He never lacked tenacity either. He had systematic problems with his growing spinal column. Semifinalist at the US Open junior 2017, the year in which he is fourth best under 18 in the world and wins the ITF Junior Masters in Chgengdu, he has learned to manage his own body. In 2019, he won four Challengers, which aren’t quite the same but helped him gain a hundred places in the standings. At the end of 2020, he entered the top ten in the world for the first time. And at the end of the season he trained with Rafa Nadal in the Spanish family academy.

Ruusuvuori is putting Finland back on the men’s tennis map, in the wake of the achievements of Nieminen, former world number 13, and the doubler Henri Kontinen, the first Finn to win a Grand Slam.

The transition from junior tournaments to the world of professionalism was not easy for at least two reasons. On the one hand, for the introverted character, the light nature and a certain artistic taste. Personality traits that would not seem to combine well with the needs of a highly professionalized individual sport.

On the other, Ruusuvuori was also held back by a recurring series of back injuries. But in 2019 he won four Challenger titles in five months and that changed everything.

His aggressive and solid tennis, his desire to control the point by hitting the ball immediately after the rebound and near the back line made him make up for a lot of lost time. At the US Open last year, his first Grand Slam victory (against Slovenian Aljaz Bedene) throws him for the first time in the top-100 in the ATP ranking.

A year after that exploit, its growth prospects remain high. In Washington he presented himself with the best ranking of number 69 in the world and ever bigger dreams in his pocket.