Finland's Emil Ruusuvuori sparking a Nordic tennis dream

Emil Ruusuvuori is only 22 but already boasts of wins against the likes of Alexander Zverev and Dominic Thiem in his nascent career. And the remarkable becomes unbelievable when you take into account he was spotted by a tennis coach, Mika Muilu, for his hand skills while he was playing badminton with his mom at the age of five. Ruusuvuori is a gifted athlete to begin with, but he still wonders what if Muilu had not interrupted that friendly shuttle session between a mother and son.

“I was lucky. I always liked all kinds of sports. I was not really bad in any of them,” the Finn said in an exclusive chat with TOI on the sidelines of the Tata Open Maharashtra.

“Actually it was his (Muilu’s) brother who had told him to ‘check this kid’, and he came up to watch and asked if I wanted to try tennis. “I had no other athlete in the family. So I really don’t know if I would have gotten this far in sport if it wasn’t for him.

“Since then I had tried other sports but tennis has remained the No. 1. There have been some difficult times and some easier times.

But tennis was the No. 1 for me really.” Ruusuvuori has come a long way since then. He reached No.

4 in world junior rankings and in the following three years has been busy giving shape to Muilu’s prophesy on the international stage. In 2019, he got the better of Thiem in a Davis Cup. The following year, he beat Sebastian Korda in his ATP Masters debut in Cincinnati.

But the biggest win of his career yet came against Zverev, then ranked No. 7, in Miami last year. “The tournament in Miami was the best week.