A Las Vegas road trip helped burnt out Alexander Bublik get back on track

Twelve months ago at Roland Garros, Alexander Bublik was a Top 20 player. Holding a ranking he never imagined possible, Bublik felt compelled to become more of a “professional solider” and less of a free spirit.

He trained harder, he adopted a stricter diet, he shied away from parties. Yet by March of this year, the Kazakh found himself outside of the Top 80. His stretch of tough blows and early exits wasn’t the result of poor effort, but rather, reaching empty on the gas tank.

“Right now everybody is like robots, and they're just crazy, crazy performance guys. Then I did it. Unfortunately, to be honest, my fall was not linked with lack of attitude and lack of practicing. It was the exact opposite. I just burned out because I was waiting for the results to come,” Bublik reflected Saturday to reporters in Paris.

At Indian Wells, the 27-year-old bowed out in the first round to Yosuke Watanuki on a Wednesday afternoon. With time to spare, his coach Artem Suprunov suggested taking a road trip to Las Vegas ahead of the Phoenix Challenger. With his pupil posting two wins and eight losses to start his season, Suprunov kept it real, as Bublik tells it.

“He's like, ‘Man, if you play like this, we're just going to be out of tennis’, of the conversation by Wimbledon because that's where my points are. After Wimbledon I made, like, 50 points,” he recalled.

Bublik agreed to the change of pace, spending three days in the Sin City and turning up for his opener in Phoenix a few hours beforehand with the mindset he was “useless” and simply needed to “let it be.”

The approach did the trick.

“I said, ‘Okay, let's go to Vegas.’ We enjoy. We change the racquet. We did many things. I said, Okay, if it goes, it goes. If not, thank you very much, tennis, and it worked,” he said.

My fall was not linked with lack of attitude and lack of practicing. It was the exact opposite. I just burned out because I was waiting for the results to come. Alexander Bublik

Bublik went on to finish runner-up to Joao Fonseca in turning a corner. By his third event of the clay-court season, he strung together three wins—including a Top 10 victory over reigning title holder Andrey Rublev–en route to the round of 16 at the Mutua Madrid Open. Prior to arriving in the French capital for the second major of the year, Bublik stood in the winners' circle at the Turin Challenger.

The momentum swing has carried into Roland Garros, where Bublik finds himself in the second week for the first time thanks to a run that includes a two-set comeback against ninth seed Alex de Minaur in-between a pair of straight-set wins.

“I just took matches way more seriously, because I can't see myself out (of the) Top 100 and not being able to play the tournaments I like to play, because I still have courage to play tennis,” he said.

“That's why. I guess there was just a shift in the mentality because I had no options whatsoever.”

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On Monday, Bublik looks to cool off fifth-seeded Jack Draper. Like his next opponent, the left-hander is more known for producing the goods on quicker surfaces but has translated his game tremendously to the terre battue. With today’s decisive dismissal of Fonseca, Draper has won 12 clay-court matches this spring – having held nine in his career prior to 2025.

“Jack for me is insane. I saw him first day here. I'm like, ‘Are you getting ready for UFC?’ Last year the guy is 40 in the world. This year he is Top 4, Top 5 in the world. That's a crazy achievement,” said Bublik.

“He doesn't seem to stop, so I mean, what do I have to do to beat him? I don't know. I will just go there, enjoy the time, show what I'm capable of showing, and we all know what I'm capable of doing on court and then we see how it goes.”