By Richard Pagliaro | @Tennis_Now | Friday, October 18, 2024
Photo credit: Clive Brunskill/Getty
New balls please was once an ATP slogan.
Recently, it was a very scary possibility for Andrey Rublev.
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Speaking to the media at the Stockholm Open, Rublev shared the health scare he suffered in the aftermath of a physical five-set US Open loss to Grigor Dimitrov last month.
In every male athlete’s worst nightmare, Rublev suffered testicle trauma.
Or as Rublev bluntly put it: “I almost lost my ball.”
The reigning Madrid champion felt pain in his testicle following that five-set US Open loss.
Fortunately, Rublev went to the hospital for treatment where he faced a terrifying prospect: Testicular amputation.
“Now I feel perfect, everything went well,” Rublev told the media in Stockholm. “I don’t know how to call it in a smart way but I can call it in a funny way.
“I almost lost my ball. I was super lucky because they say you have only five or six hours if the blood stops going there and then it’s amputation. I was lucky. I don’t know why I said, ‘let’s go to hospital just to check why I feel a weird feeling’.
“They checked straight away and they took me as an emergency to do the surgery and then they were able to do the surgery in three or four hours after the first feeling I felt. So they were able to do everything good and in the end everything is great.”
World No. 7 Rublev now has the bounce back in his step, but shared it was nearly a whole new ball game.
The last memory Rublev had before anesthesia kicked in was signing a release form permitting doctors to perform a testicle amputation if necessary. That terrifying reality might scare some stiff, but Rublev trusted the process and the medical team and said he feels healthy now.
“The last thing before they made me sleep, I signed the paper saying they were allowed to amputate my ball,” Rublev recalled. “That was the last thing before the surgery that I saw.”
Thirty-nine year-old Stan Wawrinka bounced the top-seeded Rublev out of the Stockholm Open today, 7-6, 7-6, to become the oldest semifinal in tournament history.
Still, Rublev is relieved to be back on court with body and mind intact.
