French Open 2025: Defeated Casper Ruud hits out at 'questionable system' for 'forcing players to show up injured or sick'

Casper Ruud became one of the highest-profile casualties thus far in the men's singles draw at the French Open when he fell to a four-set defeat to Nuno Borges. The seventh seed, a two-time runner-up at Roland-Garros struggled with a knee injury throughout the match and afterwards hit out at a "questionable system." "You are kind of forcing players to show up injured or sick," Ruud said.

Casper Ruud took aim at a "questionable system" which "forces players to show up injured or sick" after fighting through knee pain in his shock French Open defeat to Nuno Borges.

The Norwegian seventh seed suffered a 6-2 4-6 6-1 6-0 defeat to Portugal’s Borges at Roland-Garros on Wednesday and required treatment on a knee injury during the match.

Ruud insisted the issue was "hopefully nothing too serious" in a press conference, before revealing that he had taken anti-inflammatory pills and painkillers in a bid to "push through" that still left him feeling pain when hitting "certain shots."

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He played the match to completion despite winning just one game in the final two sets and was asked afterwards if he had considered not playing to give his body proper time to recover.

"It's kind of like a rat race when it comes to the rankings," Ruud said.

"You feel you're obligated to play with certain rules that the ATP have set up with the mandatory events. You feel like you lose a lot if you don't show up and play, both economically, point-wise, ranking-wise and opportunity-wise.

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Video credit: TNT Sports

"I know these weeks and months are really important for the remainder of the year and for my career. Of course, if my leg is broken, I won't play.

"But it's tough anyway, especially when there's a time with mandatory events to skip them because the punishments are quite hard, everyone else will play, gain points, and you won't.

"Also, there is a certain bonus system set up that is reduced if you don't show up to the mandatory events.

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"It's a questionable system because on one hand, you don't want to show up injured, and you maybe give the spot to another one. I'm not sure if you're aware, but if you don't play a mandatory event, they cut 25% of your year-end bonus.

"You are kind of forcing players to show up injured or sick, or whatever, when that is not what I think is very fair."

It marks a disappointing end to an otherwise impressive clay season for Ruud, who came to Paris on the back of a Madrid Open title win and a run to the quarter-finals in Rome.

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Ruud was asked if the injury might impact his involvement in the upcoming grass-court season, which culminates with Wimbledon at the end of June.

"We'll see. I'll go home and do some more scans as soon as possible and see if there's anything that has changed," he said.

"But between Rome and here, I took five days completely off at home. It wasn't enough to make the pain go away.

"I definitely think that I would need more than five days off, then take a status in a week or two, see where I'm at. I wish I could stay here longer. It leaves more time, of course, to recover for upcoming tournaments."

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