There were times when the 2017 season seemed like it could have been a highlights reel taken from Rafael Nadal’s long, unparalleled career. There was Nadal performing his elaborate ritual of tics and tucks, preparing to serve. Nadal, deep in the backcourt, his body torqued and poised, about to uncoil a forehand. Nadal, battling his great rival, Roger Federer, in the final at the Australian Open, in Indian Wells, in Miami, in Shanghai. 

Nadal, hair matted with sweat, clothes streaked with clay, eyes creased into a smile, nibbling trophies in Monte-Carlo, Barcelona, Madrid and Roland Garros. On the hard courts of the US Open and Beijing, too. Nadal becoming the No.1 in the Emirates ATP Rankings. 

It was all so familiar that each image could be taken for granted – just as, a year ago, it was taken for granted that Nadal was in an inevitable and inexorable decline. At the end of 2016, Nadal had seemed a broken man, frequently injured and too often unnerved. His forehand was landing short, rebounding without its usual bite. His serve was weaker, his movement a microsecond slower. He lost matches that, in the past, he would have pulled out, and he barely won matches that, in the past, he would have won in a rout. He missed long stretches with injury. 

Of course, he was still one of the best players in the world, still capable of astonishing feats. He could reach ungettable shots and turn them into his own freakish winners. He could grind opponents down and finish them off with a vicious thrust. But the big wins came more rarely and he finished 2016 at No. 9. He seemed to be fading, if not gone.

But Nadal takes nothing for granted. It is the source of his genius – as important to his success as his revolutionary, lefty, hooking forehand, his uncanny anticipation and his impeccable footwork. He begins every service, whether the first of a tournament or the last, with the same pattern of gestures. He hits every ball, whether defending or attacking, with the same level of intensity. He approaches every match with the same focus and determination, whether he is playing against Federer or a random qualifier. 

He treats every tournament just the same. After winning the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title at Monte-Carlo for an unprecedented 10th time, he was asked if Roland Garros was the next step. “The next step is not Roland Garros,” he answered. “The next step is Barcelona. That’s the real thing. Today is a good start of the clay-court season, but I never take Monte-Carlo, Barcelona, Rome, Madrid like a preparation for one tournament. These tournaments are so important in themselves.” That is the kind of statement that every player makes but only Nadal seems to truly believe. 

He would go on from Monte-Carlo to win his 10th title in Barcelona, his fifth Madrid Open title – the 30th ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title of his career, tying Novak Djokovic for the all-time record – and his 10th Roland Garros title. He seemed to be playing at another level from everyone else, dropping only one match the entire clay-court season, to Dominic Thiem in Rome. (He would go on to avenge that loss, crushing Thiem at Roland Garros.) It was one of the best clay-court seasons that the best clay player of all time had ever had. 

And Nadal wasn’t done. By August, during the hard-court season, he had become the No. 1 in the Emirates ATP Rankings for the fourth time in his career – a feat that not so long ago many had thought impossible, given his physical state and the landscape of the game. At the US Open, he stretched his lead in the Emirates ATP Rankings, winning that title with apparent ease, though always insisting on the difficulty of every match. Nothing for granted, from first ball to last. 

And in fact, once you get past the similarities between this season and seasons past, you will see that this is, in some significant ways, a changed Nadal. He is 31 years old now, which shows in the creases around the eyes, and perhaps in the occasional bafflement when a shot does not land where it should. His shorts have shortened. The more subtle and significant changes are in his game. 

This year, Nadal brought on Carlos Moya, another Spaniard to have held the No. 1 spot, to be a new voice in his camp, sitting alongside his uncle Toni Nadal, who did so much to shape Rafa’s game, and who will bow out at the end of the season. With Moya’s encouragement, Nadal paid more attention to his shotmaking, swinging freely, stepping into the court and taking the ball down the line with more frequency. He dramatically improved his service game, to the point where he could top 120 miles per hour with his first serve and hit his second with more pace and bite. He also showed this year a willingness to adjust even over the course of a match, putting more pressure on in certain moments, playing more defensively when he sensed an opponent’s nerves or weariness. 

Perhaps the last major prize for him to win is the Nitto ATP Finals. He has qualified for the year-end tournament 13 straight times, but he has never won it. This could be his best chance, but you will not know it from the total seriousness with which he enters each match. 

It has been a long year. Despite his consistently Herculean effort and brutal physical style, which tests not only his stamina but the resiliency of his wrists and knees, Nadal is the only one of his established rivals who made it through the entire 2017 without taking long breaks for rest or to recover from injury. He has been on the ATP World Tour week in and week out, playing with passion. 

Part of the pleasure of watching Nadal is that his game, like his spirit, has a kind of generosity. He often elevates his opponents’ games to levels that we, and perhaps they, had never imagined possible. It is his greatness that his own level still rises higher. 

The 2017 Nitto ATP Finals will be held at The O2 in London from 12-19 November

Just 20 years old, Alexander Zverev is the youngest qualifier at the Nitto ATP Finals since Juan Martin Del Potro’s appearance at the 2008 season finale. Simon Briggs of The Daily Telegraph looks at the fast rise of a German who has been spoken of as a future No. 1 in the Emirates ATP Rankings.

At the start of the year, Alexander Zverev would have been on most people’s lists to qualify for the Next Gen ATP Finals, the experimental 21-and-under tournament that was held in Milan last week for the first time. But Zverev himself had other ideas. Sure, it would be good to prove himself the best player in his age-group. But why stop there? 

With his 130 miles per hour serve, his ferocious hitting off the ground, and the long-legged athleticism that would put many a basketball player to shame, why shouldn’t Zverev stand among the best players of the world, period? In other words, why should he restrict himself to the 21-and-under version, when he had a decent shot at competing in the Nitto ATP Finals as well? There was certainly no bashfulness on this front from Zverev himself. The 6’6” German has been tipped for years as a future No. 1 in the Emirates ATP Rankings – a diagnosis he himself is happy to go along with. 

If Zverev possesses uncanny self-confidence, this may have something to do with his background. His parents, who hail from Russia, are tennis lifers who built his game from scratch. And his brother Mischa has been a tour player since 2005. Even as a small child, Alexander – or Sascha, as his family call him – was there at the side of the court, gripping his cut-down racquet and waiting for his turn once the big boys had finished. 

“Sascha was mentally a little bit better prepared for the tennis tour,” said Sascha’s father, Zverev Snr., when asked recently to compare the brothers. “For Mischa, everything was new. But when Sascha was six years old, for example, Djokovic was 15 or 16. Djokovic was at the same tournament and he was playing with Sascha a little bit, maybe tennis or football.” 

Alexander Zverev Snr., known to the family and back-up team simply as “Papa”, was a player of real talent in his own right. Born in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, he represented Russia 36 times in the Davis Cup, claiming victories over such familiar names as Miloslav Mecir and Vijay Amritraj. But he wasn’t able to travel regularly to tournaments because of the political climate.

In 1991, the Zverevs moved to Hamburg, where Alexander Jnr. was born in 1997. As the baby became a toddler, Papa found most of his time taken up by Mischa, who is almost 10 years older. So it was the boys’ mother Irina – inevitably known as “Mama” – who constructed her younger son’s game. “My father is my coach,” Zverev puts it, “but when I was younger my mother was guiding me more. I think I have pretty good technique, which my Mum did at a young age so credit to her for that. My backhand, in particular, is 100 per cent down to my Mum.”

This may explain the dramatic contrast between the two sons’ styles. Mischa is a throwback, coming to the net on every point behind his lefty serve. Sascha is right-handed and almost allergic to the volley, the one part of his game that his father admits he needs to brush up on. From the back of the court, though, he is relentless off both wings. The forehand is heavy and versatile, and the backhand is technically flawless – a two-hander that resembles Novak Djokovic’s in its consistency, yet travels at greater speed. Combine that with the loping, almost effortless lateral movement across the baseline – which he is able to cover in a couple of giant strides – and he makes an intimidating prospect for anyone.

Zverev was still only 19 when he won his first ATP World Tour title, in St Petersburg, just over a year ago, by overcoming Tomas Berdych and Stan Wawrinka in successive matches. And that breakthrough seemed to flick a switch. From the beginning of this season, he has been mopping up the trophies: Montpellier, Munich, Rome, Washington D.C. and Montreal. And the most significant element in that series is Rome, where he defeated Djokovic in the final to become the youngest winner of an ATP World Tour Masters 1000 title in 10 years (since Djokovic himself). By beating Roger Federer in the Montreal final he became the first player outside the ‘Big Four’ to win multiple Masters 1000 titles in the same season since David Nalbandian in 2007. 

Another of Zverev’s remarkable assets is his physical resilience. Zverev might still look like a baby giraffe, his stretched-out limbs suggesting a lack of steadiness, but this is an optical illusion. In fact, he has been training with Jez Green – formerly Andy Murray’s fitness guru – since he was 16 to make sure he could withstand the pummeling of year-round tennis. 

As you can see, Zverev has been one step ahead of the game since the very beginning. Clearly, he possesses all the natural attributes, including an eye as sharp as a raptor’s, and the cussed nature that has always driven him to fight until the last point. But he has also been steered to perfection by his family, his agent Patricio Apey (who also used to work with Murray) and the rest of his backroom staff.

In August, Zverev finally brought in an outside coach for the first time. His choice was Spaniard Juan Carlos Ferrero, a former World No. 1, whom he described as “such an easy guy to be around”. One suspects, though, that Ferrero is there to offer experience more than technical guidance. The only thing that Alexander Zverev Snr. lacks is the first-hand knowledge of what it is like to land major titles.

“I think my dad might be one of the best family coaches of all time,” Zverev has said. “He has two sons who are in the Top 25 in the world… with two completely different game styles. That’s not easy to do. You’ve got to be very smart, you’ve got to know what to practise and what to teach… Our practice sessions are completely different. I think no other coach has done that, to bring two players from scratch, absolute zero to the Top 25 in the world. So I think he really is one of the greatest coaches of all time.”

Only time will tell whether Alexander Zverev Jnr. will deliver on all the extraordinary predictions that have been made about him. What we do know, though, is that he couldn’t have got off to a better start.  

The 2017 Nitto ATP Finals will be held at The O2 in London from 12-19 November

Four months after an emotional appearance in his first Wimbledon final, Marin Cilic is back in London after qualifying for the Nitto ATP Finals for the third time. As Stuart Fraser of The Times writes, victory for Cilic this week would be a heartening tale.

One of the enduring images of this year’s Wimbledon men’s singles final is of Marin Cilic breaking down during a change of ends, with the Croatian sitting on his chair with his head buried under a towel. Those tears came around 45 minutes into the match when Cilic, trailing by a set and 0-3, and with two medics crouched in front of him, was hit by the realisation it wasn’t to be his day. That distress was borne more of frustration than of physical pain.   

Now, it is hard enough to beat Roger Federer – who is considered to be the greatest grass-court player in history, and who would score a record eighth Wimbledon title that afternoon – when you are fully fit, never mind when a blistered foot is hampering your movement across the Centre Court grass. “It came to the point where I felt that my chances of winning were very slim,” Cilic recalls. “Considering the injury that I had, it just pushed me back emotionally and I felt in that moment, ‘That’s it, I cannot give my best in one of the most important matches of my career’. Just considering all the facts, it was little bit too tough for my mind.” 

It was a rare display of emotion from someone who has always had a reserved manner on the court. While most of the crowd had come in the expectation of seeing Federer make history at the All England Club, they appreciated that Cilic needed their support in that moment. So as he stood up from his chair to continue play, many of the 15,000 spectators were also up on their feet. Four months later, Cilic is back in London, where he can expect a warm welcome. He has always enjoyed playing in the city, and that appreciation and affection for the British tennis public have only grown since such a collective show of kindness in the summer.

Cilic’s blisters have long gone, he is over the disappointment of losing a Wimbledon final, and much satisfaction can be taken from the season he has put together to qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals for the third time.

Finishing among the leading eight players is all the more impressive when you consider he made a slow start in the first three months of this year, including losing his first matches at the opening two ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournaments of the season, in Indian Wells and Miami. It was on the clay that Cilic’s form finally took an upward curve. By defeating Milos Raonic, of Canada, in the final of the TEB BNP Paribas Istanbul Open, Cilic took at least one title on the ATP World Tour for the 10th consecutive year. With 17 titles, Goran Ivanisevic (22) is the only Croatian to have more. That same week, Cilic also became only the third player from his country, after Ivanisevic and Ivan Ljubicic, to win 400 or more matches. A run to the quarter-finals of Roland Garros was his best performance in 11 appearances.

With his confidence at a high, Cilic set himself up for the grass-court swing, for a surface on which he has always been a force, thanks to the powerful serve he can fire down from a height of 6’6”, and his atomic forehand. Here in London, Cilic came close to winning the Aegon Championships at The Queen’s Club for a second time to add to his 2012 triumph, but, despite holding a match point against Spain’s Feliciano Lopez, he could not quite get across the finish line, and after two and a half hours eventually lost 10-8 in the deciding tie-break. Despite departing with no trophy, Cilic was at least comforted in the knowledge that he had only dropped his serve once all week. 

This level of performance continued at Wimbledon, where Cilic, almost three years after winning the 2014 US Open, reached his second Grand Slam final. “I think that part of the year was the most consistent I have ever played during my whole career,” Cilic says. “In that stretch from the clay-court season to the end of the grass-court season, I found that great balance of playing really good tennis on a high level and still keeping it consistent match after match, week after week.”

Unfortunately, Cilic’s momentum was lost through sustaining an adductor injury. He did not hit a ball until two weeks before the US Open, and played no other tournaments leading into the last major of the season. “I was just a little bit unlucky to get the injury at that moment after Wimbledon, after such good form and playing such great tennis,” says Cilic, who lost in the third round in New York. “It pushed me maybe one step back in regaining my form and getting back to the court and finding the nice balance I had during the grass-court season.”

Cilic did eventually rediscover his mojo during the Asian swing last month. 

Consecutive semi-final appearances at the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships in Tokyo and the Shanghai Rolex Masters earned him a career-high position of No. 4 in the Emirates ATP Rankings. On Cilic’s two previous appearances at the season finale, in 2014 and 2016, he didn’t progress into the knock-out stages, but his return this week may well prove more fruitful if he can bring the high level of play he has shown recently. 

A settled period with his coaching team of Jonas Bjorkman, the former World No. 4 who was hired in August last year, and Ivan Cinkus, who joined Cilic’s team in April 2015, has brought improvements to his game, particularly to his serve. “I am a little bit more consistent this year in serving performances. I’m winning quite a lot of service games and a lot of matches. I’m leaving the match either not broken or broken only once, so that’s something very valuable for me. Overall, when I’m playing well, I’m going to give myself a lot of chances on the returns. I’m keeping that pressure all the time on the guys, and it pays off in the end.”

If Cilic’s serve and forehand are in full flow at the Nitto ATP Finals, this week may well end with the trophy in his hands. Four months after his tears at SW19, victory in SE10 would be a heartening tale.  

Hyeon Chung may have secured his semi-final spot at the inaugural Next Gen ATP Finals on Wednesday, but there will be plenty of action on Thursday. Three more spots in the final four are up for grabs on the final day of round-robin play.

The stakes are clearest in one match in particular, as the winner between Andrey Rublev and Denis Shapovalov will qualify as the second semi-finalist in Chung’s group. Both players are 1-1 so far in Group A action. The Russian-Canadian battle will be their first meeting

Rublev, who earned his first ATP World Tour title in Umag, is trying to earn his 20th win of the season (19-17). The 18-year-old Shapovalov is the youngest player in the field and he advanced to his maiden semi-final on home soil at the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event in Montreal.

Chung will attempt to finish 3-0 in the group as he takes on Italian wild card Gianluigi Quinzi for the first time as professionals. Quinzi won both of their meetings in the juniors, triumphing in Milan five years ago on clay, and also beating the South Korean in the 2013 Wimbledon Boys’ Singles final.

In Group B action, No. 2 seed Karen Khachanov, fourth-seeded Borna Coric and No. 7 seed Daniil Medvedev are all in contention for the two semi-final spots. Fifth-seeded Jared Donaldson has been eliminated.

Coric has the best chance of advancing, after winning his first two matches in Milan. The Croatian will take on Khachanov for the second time this season. In February, Coric won in two sets in the Rotterdam first round.

Khachanov, who is 1-1 so far, lost to his countryman, Medvedev, in four sets in the opening match of the tournament. He then beat Donaldson in straight sets on Wednesday. Khachanov has posted a career-high 26 wins this season.

Medvedev is 1-1 so far in group play and he takes on Donaldson (0-2) for the first time. Both players have cracked the Top 50 in the Emirates ATP Rankings this season with Medvedev reaching a career-high No. 48 on 24 July and Donaldson No. 50 on 23 October.

Medvedev reached his first ATP World Tour final in Chennai (l. to Bautista Agut) in the opening week of the season and was a semi-finalist in Eastbourne (l. to Djokovic) prior to Wimbledon.

It took all of five games on Tuesday at the Next Gen ATP Finals for the numerous innovations being tested to play a major factor.

During the first match, Russian Daniil Medvedev served a deciding deuce point at 40/40, 2-3. Win it, and Medvedev would force a tie-break and still have a chance to win the opening set. But lose it, and he’d be down a set against countryman Karen Khachanov.

Medvedev eventually lost the point, and therefore the set. But the moment made clear just how much the innovations and rule changes would dominate Day 1 of the inaugural tournament, which saw a plethora of potential future changes tested for the first time on the ATP World Tour.

Perhaps the most noticeable innovation: no lines people were on court and an automated voice from Hawk-Eye Live called balls “out” and shouted “fault” when serves landed outside the box.

“I really liked it,” Medvedev said of the electronic line calling. “It was very fun for me, and, it’s something new and fresh. Especially at the end of the season, when you are tired, for me it was really cool to play with these rules.”

Khachanov also OK’d Hawk-Eye Live, but the Russian suggested a slightly more personal touch for the system.

“I think it’s better that all umpires record their voices,” Khachanov said. “You hear the same voice, looks like he’s calling the outs. But this is definitely a good thing.”

In-match coaching also debuted to positive reviews as coaches and players discussed strategy live on broadcast television. American Jared Donaldson was the lone player of the eight #NextGenATP finalists who did not utilise the end-of-set conferences.

Learn More About The Milan Innovations

Khachanov sought guidance after falling behind two sets to one, and his coach, Galo Blanco, cited the statistics on his tablet while communicating the way forward.

“The difference Karen, is look, in the third set you did 16 unforced errors. And in between the first and the second, you did 10. So that’s the main thing,” Blanco said. “When you are controlling the point, you are kind of rushing and selecting the wrong shot and you are missing. Try to find the balance in between being aggressive and going for the shot and not playing passive.”

Denis Shapovalov, who lost to South Korea’s Hyeon Chung, also chatted with his coach and eyed statistics during breaks in the match.

“It’s definitely another cool feature to have. I always thought, ‘Why can’t we look at stats during the match?’” Shapovalov said. “So it’s good to look at the basics, too, just your serve percentage, unforced errors, winners, just stuff like that.”

The ability to view the stats had a direct impact during Medvedev’s win against Khachanov. The victorious Russian said he altered where he was serving after viewing Hawk-Eye data on direction of serves.

“For [Khachanov] it was totally the same percentage of serving either wide or T. For me, it was not,” he said. “Before the fourth set, in my mind I was, like, ‘OK, I need to change it a little bit.’ I don’t know if it worked, but finally I won, didn’t lose the serve, so I guess I made those things right.”

Speaking of serves, more than a few of them slapped the net cord and landed in the service box and were played by the #NextGenATP players, except for one instance during which a chair umpire showed his human side.

During the Medvedev-Khachanov match, a serve hit the net cord for the first time in the tournament, and chair umpire Carlos Bernardes instinctively called a let, before calling another let because the #NextGenATP players are to play all serves that hit the net cords.

“I liked the let rule, because it did help me a lot on the match point. It was really lucky,” said Borna Coric, whose final serve during his straight-sets win against Jared Donaldson clipped the tape. “I think it should also be in the other tournaments, because I think we are having many arguments about what is it a let.”

The shot clock debuted with little trouble. Italian wild card Gianluigi Quinzi was called for a time violation, but it was at the start of the match, and the left-hander shrugged it off.

But the shot-clock innovation did weigh on players’ minds. Coric found himself rushing to the service line because he was worried about receiving a time violation. The Croatian also felt more tired than usual during the match.

“I didn’t want to get the warning,” Coric said. “Also my coach told me that sometimes I would serve and I had still 15 seconds left. So I just don’t like that pressure. I mean, it’s also good in some ways, because it does speed up the game. But I just need to get used to that so that maybe I can start my whole motion with seven or eight seconds left, not on maybe 15.”

The free movement of fans on the sides of the court earned mixed reviews, and others called for more time to compete with the new rules before offering judgement on everything.

It has been, after all, only one day of the Next Gen ATP Finals, and there will be many more experiments and comments, perhaps a few more net cords, but definitely more discussions about the tournament’s innovations.

Wednesday’s final match was intense, and it was largely due to the innovative format being used at the inaugural Next Gen ATP Finals.

Borna Coric was serving for the match against Daniil Medvedev, up two sets to one and 3-2, 40/15. On the surface, it seemed like the Russian had little chance. But thanks to the no-ad scoring system, when Medvedev found his way to deuce, everything was on the line. One more point and he could force a tie-break, and from there a fifth set.

But Medvedev could not save a third match point, and Coric prevailed, 4-3(5), 2-4, 4-1, 4-2.

“I think it was really physical,” Coric said. “The first two sets were extremely tough.

Coric’s physicality was simply too much for Medvedev. The Croatian wore the seventh seed down over the course of the match. Coric began to gain rhythm on the Russian’s serving patterns, especially in the deuce court, and once rallies became extended the advantage went to Coric, who won 61 per cent of the total points over the final two sets, erasing all four break points.

Whereas Hyeon Chung advanced to the semi-finals earlier in the day thanks to his second victory of the tournament, Coric still has work to do after his second triumph. Both Group B spots in the semi-finals remain up for grabs on Thursday, the final day of round-robin play.

Coric will play the group’s other Wednesday winner, Karen Khachanov, in Thursday’s final evening session match.

Medvedev, who defeated Khachanov in the first match of the event, will look to add his second win against Jared Donaldson, who seeks his first.

There are 13 different qualifying scenarios for Group B, with Coric moving on in all but possibly two of them. If Khachanov and Medvedev both triumph in three sets, then Khachanov will win the group and Medvedev would qualify second. If Khachanov wins in four sets and Medvedev in three sets, then Donaldson the order will be determined by the percentage of games won. In all scenarios, Donaldson has been eliminated from contention for the semi-finals.

The Next Gen ATP Finals has been branded as “The Future of Tennis”. But Denis Shapovalov was all old-school on Wednesday night in Milan.

The 18-year-old Canadian dominated Italian wild card Gianluigi Quinzi at the Fiera Milano, blasting 41 winners to pick up his first victory at the inaugural tournament, 4-1, 4-1, 3-4(5), 4-3(5) in 89 minutes.

Shapovalov is now 1-1 in Milan and will have a chance to reach the semi-finals on Thursday when he faces top seed Andrey Rublev. The winner will advance to the last four. 

“It was extremely tough. Gianluigi started playing unbelievable in the third set,” Shapovalov said. “It was tough to stay in it mentally so I’m really proud of myself.”

Learn More About The Next Gen ATP Finals Innovation

Shapovalov had dropped his opener, falling on Tuesday to South Korea’s Hyeon Chung, who became the first to reach the semi-finals on Wednesday behind a 2-0 start and is the Group A champion. But the Canadian, who counts wins against Juan Martin del Potro, Rafael Nadal and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga among his best victories this year, had to like his chances against the left-handed Quinzi.

Every time the 21-year-old Italian hit his best shot – his forehand – cross-court, he fed it to Shapovalov’s best shot – his forehand. So points often resulted in forehand rallies, a matchup Shapovalov welcomed all evening.

Down two sets to love, Quinzi mixed up his tactics in the third set, targetting Shapovalov’s backhand. The change helped him mount a comeback and force Shapovalov into a fourth set. But the Canadian avoided a five-setter against the home favourite.

Quinzi, a former junior World No. 1 who won the 2013 Wimbledon junior boys title, will go for his first win in Milan when he faces Chung on Thursday.

To survive in both elite tennis and Russian politics, you need good intelligence or just to be exceptionally astute. Who can you trust?

“In tennis and politics, you have to know who your friends are and also who your enemies are,” says Marat Safin.

The Russian has navigated both worlds. And now, he is stepping back onto the tennis court to compete in Champions Tennis at the Royal Albert Hall in London, an ATP Champions Tour event taking place from 29 November through 3 December.

As a former world number one, and a winner of two Grand Slam singles titles, Safin could have spent his retirement “making commercials left and right and pretending that I’m a celebrity”, and perhaps competing on the ATP Champions Tour.

But that wouldn’t have been the life for him, and instead he sought and won a seat in the Duma. From 2011 until earlier this year, he sat in the Russian parliament as a member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party. In Safin’s analysis, there are a number of similarities between tennis and the Duma, where he represented the Nizhny Novgorod region, with his success as an athlete helping him in his second career as a politician (and not just because it meant he already had a public profile).

“As a tennis player and also as a politician, you have to be in the moment and you have to be very sure of what you’re doing,” said the 37-year-old Safin, who retired from tennis in 2009. “There are lots of moving parts, so you have to know what your goal is and what your strategy is to achieve that goal. I’ve taken what I learned from tennis and implemented that into a life after sport.”

Safin once suggested he “could be the best looking guy in the Duma, but that’s only because all the other guys are over 60.” Known during his playing days for his destructive tendencies — he has estimated he broke around 700 racqets during his career — Safin has appreciated creating something, and “getting things done”, as “part of a big machine.”

“Being in the Duma has been a really important ride for me. I was in the Duma for six years and I learned a lot. I learned how the system works and there were lots of things to discover that the normal person, outside the Duma, perhaps wouldn’t understand,” Safin said. “It was a pleasure to experience this for myself to see how everything works in the world, and you start to have a lot of respect for a lot of people because you see how they get things to happen.”

According to the Muscovite, working in politics takes a massive effort.

“Things don’t happen on their own; they happen because of the work that people put in, because of the system,” Safin said. “It’s a big machine and being a part of it was a great thing. Anybody who gets the opportunity to work for any government at a federal level, that’s going to be a huge thing in their life. It’s probably going to be difficult but you can take pride in the work that you do.”

Feeling as though “it was time to move on”, Safin stepped down from the Duma to begin “a new life”, which includes making his first appearance in the ATP Champions Tour event at the Royal Albert Hall. The power in Safin’s game is sure to captivate the fans in London.

It was at the 2000 US Open that Safin, with his muscular, aggressive tennis, hit Pete Sampras off the court to win his first major, and five years later he defeated Lleyton Hewitt in the 2005 Australian Open final to score his second. Among other highlights, he twice won the Davis Cup for Russia, in 2002 and 2006, and in 2008 reached the semi-finals of Wimbledon, his deepest ever run at the All England Club.

“There used to be lots of stresses on the tour, but playing tennis now, there’s a lot more pleasure. You have to think about it this way, because too much stress is really unpleasant. I’m enjoying tennis a lot more than I used to when I was on the regular tour,” says Safin, whose fitness regime has included playing ice hockey. “The players say the Champions tennis tournament is a great event, and I’ve been looking forward to playing in London. For sure, it’s going to be a great tournament, and I think I’ll enjoy the experience.”