Andrey Rublev: Tennis star almost had to have testicles amputated

«What else can I say about that? I almost lost a testicle, that’s true,” explains Andrey Rublev with a big grin on his lips when he talks about his emergency operation 20 minutes before the Swiss Indoors in Basel. The Russian had to undergo this in Barcelona at the beginning of September after he suddenly felt unwell after fitness training.

“Out of nowhere I started having pain in my stomach and a little further down,” says Rublev. At first he hoped that the pain would go away and waited a while. “When I tried to train on the tennis court, I couldn’t move properly,” says the world number 7. His team then recommended that he go to the doctor.

Once he got to the hospital, he would have been immediately sent to an emergency in the Catalan capital. The blood didn’t flow through properly, reports Rublev. “They told me: If that happens, you only have five or six hours for the operation. Otherwise the testicle is completely dead.”

The tennis star emphasizes that he is very happy to have survived the operation unscathed. “The last thing I did before the operation was to sign the document agreeing to have my testicle amputated,” Rublev continued.

“On the one hand it’s funny, but on the other hand it’s not,” says the top seeded player at this year’s Swiss Indoors with a smile. Apparently the medical procedure didn’t seem to have thrown him off track. This is especially true since he was able to return to the tennis court shortly after the operation.

He now wants to cause a sensation in Basel after an eventful season. But he doesn’t have great expectations before the indoor classic. «I know what tennis is like. “Sometimes things don’t go as expected,” says Rublev before his opening round duel on Monday against the Portuguese Nuno Borges (ATP 32).