Ruud Neared Breaking Point Over Roland Garros Practice Snub

One of the most tension-filled moments of the fifth episode of Netflix’s Break Point comes when Casper Ruud attempts to warm up for a match at Roland Garros. The rain had not begun to fall, but the court crew begins to cover the surface with tarp, preventing the Norwegian from hitting.

Ruud and his team, led by father and coach Christian Ruud, protest in the hopes Casper could quickly warm up.

“I get stressed out when I’m late for practice. I freak out, actually,” Ruud told ATPTour.com. “That’s the moment you’ll find me the most stressed. I didn’t freak out at Roland Garros, but it was quite close to seeing a new side of myself.”

It was one of the biggest moments of Ruud’s life: The then-World No. 8 was attempting to warm up for his first major semi-final.

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“It was all fine in the end and Rafa and Sascha, they played for so long anyway, so honestly I could have waited with my warmup due to my routines,” Ruud said. “But you never know, one could have won easier than the other and the match could have been over and we would have maybe gone straight from warmup to match, which is not what you want to do.

“Everything was fine in the end, but just that instant was unfortunate I think for both the player and the people responsible for the courts.”

Ruud’s father, Christian, provided more contextual details to explain the situation.

“I was stressed because you’re playing the biggest match of your life and you’re not allowed to warm up even though it was not raining. They said it was going to rain, but I said, ‘It’s not raining now, so let’s see if we can play for 10 minutes or 15 minutes,’” Christian said. “We ended up being in an argument for 10, 15 minutes and after 15 minutes it started to rain, so I was really, really angry because maybe 15 minutes would have been enough for us to play. And then we had to go to this indoor place and it was a nightmare.

“But it worked out and the good thing of course is it was a big match where you want to get a good start, so that’s why you want to warm up, because you want to get ready and not get nervous. In Grand Slams at least you have best-of-five sets, you can afford to have a bad start, but still the first set can be really important, so I was stressed about it, but it worked out well.”

Ruud rallied from a set down to defeat Marin Cilic in four sets in the semi-finals, advancing to his first Grand Slam final. The Norwegian would continue his surge from there, making another major final at the US Open and climbing to a career-high Pepperstone ATP Ranking.

Proper warmup or not, all is well that ends well.