It all adds up for Ruud: From ‘a small kid in Norway’ to the world's biggest stages

Casper Ruud will chase a milestone moment Sunday at the Mutua Madrid Open, where he takes on Jack Draper in the championship match at the Caja Magica: Ruud, a former No. 2 in the PIF ATP Rankings, is competing for his maiden ATP Masters 1000 crown.

ATPTour.com recently caught up with Ruud to learn how it all adds up for the 12-time tour-level champion, including his favourite Lexus ATP Head2Head rivalry in history and what he considers to be his greatest success. If he defeats Draper in Madrid, the 26-year-old would be the first player from Norway to lift a Masters 1000 trophy at this level, and he also explains why hailing from such a relatively small tennis country was one of his greatest difficulties early in his career.

What is your favourite tennis rivalry?
Rafa-Novak or Rafa-Roger, definitely. One of those three typically ended up playing each other in a final of the biggest tournament, so that's the go-to answer I guess.

Who is your greatest rival?
It's tempting to say Alcaraz because I've lost to him in some of my biggest finals. Then you look at him as a rival and we haven't played a tremendous amount of times, but we have played five times. In my first Masters 1000 final I played him and lost in Miami, and in the US Open final when we were both playing for our first Slam, I lost to him. So, it's tempting to go with him. He's young and hopefully I get to play him many more times.

What is the greatest difficulty or adversity that you've had to overcome?
I think just the fact that I come from a small tennis country in terms of the history of the sport in our country. When I grew up watching all these legends on TV, I was in the era of watching Roger become the greatest when he broke Sampras’ Grand Slam record and then Rafa topped him, and then Novak came and topped him again.

So it was hard to envision myself, some days at least, as a small kid from Norway who would be able to get up there and play the biggest tournaments, the biggest matches, which in my eyes are Grand Slam finals. Of course I've never won one, but just to be there was an experience and I kind of pinched myself in the arm the times I got to play finals of big tournaments.

I was seven or eight or nine watching Rafa against Roger or Novak against Rafa or anyone play a Slam final, and I'm here myself. So I think that's a long challenge, because it's my whole career. But I think that's what I'm most proud of — that I believed even from a young age that someday I could do it.

What has been your greatest success?
When you look at my career as it stands today, the majority of my success has been on clay. That’s why I think the most fun and good I've felt about success is doing really good in hard-court tournaments, where people maybe wrote me off. Or even making the finals of the Nitto ATP Finals one year [on a] fast indoor hard court has been something that I felt a really big success, because leading into that week, probably no one counted on me ever being in that final or the US Open final or the Miami final, for example. So, I think those results have been a success that I've really enjoyed and appreciated in my career.

What is your favourite ATP tournament?
I do think Indian Wells is probably the tournament where players' comfort is just on another level. That's nice for us when you travel the whole world and you know you go through time zones, and it's nice to have a good proper rest and feel that you're taken care of, so Indian Wells does a great job with that.

Everything there, the amenities are just incredible, so I do think that on the ATP Tour, Indian Wells is the best tournament and my personal favourite.

What's the coolest off-court experience you've been able to enjoy being a pro tennis player?
I've been able to play a few Laver Cups, which was a really cool experience, because you're on a team with fellow European players.

Sometimes, even though I haven't had much success over there unfortunately, I think it's really fun to be in Asia and in Shanghai, because the fans behave in a very different way and you feel like a rockstar when you're there, almost like a superstar. You feel like you have this status for a few days that you don't really feel anywhere else because the Asian culture is a little different. So walking around for the first time in Shanghai, I felt like I was almost overwhelmed by the support, which was kind of fun in a way.