Undeniably, Emil Ruusuvuori made plenty of ranking progress in 2022, going from World No. 95 at the beginning of the year to No. 40 in December. He managed to debut inside the top 50 and make himself a more reliable force on the ATP Tour, something he’s been expected to do for a few years now. However, there were a couple of moments where it felt like he was close to taking one more step toward the top. The 23-year-old went 0-7 against top 10 opponents this year and lost his maiden ATP final in Pune.
Some early losses to regret
One of the matches to regret came as early as January. At the Australian Open, Ruusuvuori drew the short straw with 9th seed Felix Auger-Aliassime in the opening round. Despite that, the Finn went two sets to one up in a high-octane contest. He even bageled Auger-Aliassime in one of the sets he won, but ended up going down after 3 hours and 40 minutes. His opponent made the quarterfinals of that event and went on to have an absolutely brilliant 2022 campaign.
A month later, Ruusuvuori had a brilliant opportunity to capture his maiden ATP Tour title. Pune was one of the weakest 250 events of the season and with top seed Aslan Karatsev out in the second round, the draw was really opening up. Ruusuvuori was heavily favored in all of his matches, not facing a single opponent ranked higher than World No. 80. Unfortunately, he fell to the veteran Joao Sousa in the final, just missing out on what seemed to be his tournament to lose.
Another missed chance came at the Miami Masters as Ruusuvuori battled against Jannik Sinner in the second round. Despite three match points (one on his serve), the Finn couldn’t close it out and ended up losing 8-10 in the deciding tie-break. He was the better player throughout, but once again it wasn’t really a weakness in his game that stopped him from turning it into one of the best wins of his career, it was just the mental hiccups.
Making himself a more regular force on the circuit
The rest of 2022 was a little quieter for the Finn, but he did produce a couple of very solid runs on the ATP Tour. One was a quarterfinal in Queens (coming from the qualifying draw) and the other was a semifinal in Stockholm. Especially in the latter, he seemed to be in absolutely crushing form with the way he dispatched his first three opponents, but was then almost as soundly beaten by Stefanos Tsitsipas. In the meantime, Ruusuvuori also scored the best win of his season in Washington, taking out World No. 11 Hubert Hurkacz.
Where does the 23-year-old go from here? It was the best season of his young career and he’s managed to make himself a more constant ATP Tour presence than in the past. He’s got a high ceiling and the ability to redline his game, it’s just about making it happen with more frequency. Sadly, he’s yet to develop a transition game that would help him close out the points he sets up for himself with his power baselining. The current ranking of World No. 40 definitely feels closer to where he should be than the 95th spot he was occupying at the beginning of 2022 though.
Main Photo from Getty Images
