Russian world No 9 has become as well-known for hurting himself on court as for his tennis but feels he has turned a corner

‘I’m definitely feeling much better,” Andrey Rublev says as, with disarming honesty, he offers fresh insight into his long struggle with depression and physically hurting himself on court. “I’m still not in a place where I would like to be but, finally, I have a base. I have something to step on because, half a year ago, I arrived at the worst moment of my life in terms of how I feel about myself.”

We are talking just days away from the Australian Open and Rublev, the No 9 seed who has reached the quarter-finals in three out of the past four years in Melbourne, is charming, interesting and just a little tortured as he tries to understand the reasons for his psychological complexities in a manner as friendly as it is forensic. He turns a sports interview into a free-flowing conversation in which he is not afraid to share revealing personal truths.