ANDREY RUBLEV has revealed that he nearly lost his testicle following his US Open exit.
The Russian tennis star, 26, was beaten in five gruelling sets by Grigor Dimitrov in New York.
He subsequently withdrew from his next scheduled tournament in Hangzhou, China, citing “illness”.
Having since played in Beijing and Shanghai, Rublev is back in Europe for this week’s ATP 250 event in Stockholm.
Following his comfortable second round victory over Alexandre Muller last night, Rublev publicly revealed for the first time that he’d been hours away from needing his testicle amputated, having undergone emergency surgery.
“I don’t know how to call it in a smart way but I can call it in a funny way,” he began. “I almost lost my ball.
“I was super lucky because they say you have only five or six hours if the blood stops going there and then it’s amputation.
“I was lucky. I don’t know why I said, ‘let’s go to hospital just to check why I feel a weird feeling’.
“They checked straight away and they took me as an emergency to do the surgery and then they were able to do the surgery in three or four hours after the first feeling I felt.
“So they were able to do everything good and in the end everything is great.”
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He then incredibly revealed: “The last thing before they made me sleep, I signed the paper saying they were allowed to amputate my ball – that was the last thing before the surgery that I saw.”
Rublev returned from his ordeal in Beijing more than three weeks later, beating Pablo Carreno Busta and Alejandro Davidovich Fokina before losing to Bu Yunchaokete in the quarter-finals.
He then lost to teenager Jakub Mensik in his Shanghai opener before returning to Europe.
Rublev is in action in Sweden this week, aiming to bolster his chances of qualifying for next month’s ATP Finals in Turin.
He currently occupies the eighth and final place ahead of what is set to be a sprint to the finish.
The world No7 will meet 39-year-old Stan Wawrinka in the Nordic Open quarter-finals later today.
He is then scheduled to play in Basel, and at the Masters 1000 in Paris the following week.
