Casper Ruud on Jannik Sinner: "I hope he keeps his head high."

The World No. 5 from Norway sounded sympathetic notes—and put settlements into broader context—regarding the controversial Sinner resolution.

Casper Ruud pondering on Monday night. (Photo by MEXTENIS)

ACAPULCO, Mexico — ATP No. 5 Casper Ruud gave one of the most thorough and empathetic answers so far from a top player about the controversial settlement accepted by ATP No. 1 Jannik Sinner, who agreed to serve a three month suspension rather than go to trial against the World Anti-Doping Agency at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in April.

I asked Ruud—who had previously refuted a false quote about Sinner’s situation which had been attributed to him on Twitter—about his thoughts after after he’d won opening round match Monday evening at the Mexican Open, a 6-4, 6-3 win over Arthur Rinderknech.

Here’s our exchange:

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: I just saw your tweets a few days ago about a quote that wasn't accurate but was attributed to you, about Jannik Sinner and his penalty. And you said you hadn't read the report. And so a few days later, I just want to ask for your actual thoughts on what's been going on, because it's obviously been a big story atop men's tennis right now.

Casper Ruud: Yeah. I think... I feel sorry for Jannik. He’s, in my view, not done anything intentionally.

And, you know, it is not the first time it has happened—but it doesn’t happen often—that settlements happen in a potential doping sentence, which was probably surprising for a few people.

When you look at the [legal system], it’s not unusual that it happens when someone is about to go to trial. I mean, there’s many other cases where settlements happened just before a trial.

So, my understanding, if I was in Jannik’s shoes, of course I would love to have the possibility to defend myself in an open trial, which I'm sure he was going for. But when you go trial, there is—if I try to put myself in his shoes—I mean, if you go to trial, there's always a risk that you might be found guilty, even if you aren’t guilty, if the juries or the judges see things in a different way. I mean, look at how many cases in the world someone has gone to jail when he wasn't guilty, or she wasn't guilty. So, I mean, there's always a risk that you might be found guilty even though you aren't.

So, a settlement of three months—or a suspension of three months—was something that both were happy to do. Still, I feel sorry for Jannik. He will be out, he will miss 4 out of 9 Masters 1000s for something he didn't intentionally do.

So I hope he keeps his head high. Me personally, I’m always rooting for him. I think it's a joy to watch him play, and I hope the three months go by quickly for him. Yeah, it’s just sad for him, and tennis as a sport, when the World No. 1 goes through something like this.

And, yeah, I guess that's kind of my thought about it at the moment, yeah.

Shelton’s Silence

Shortly after this post went up, I asked ATP No. 14 Ben Shelton a similar question about Sinner’s settlement. Shelton, who had lost to Sinner in straight sets in the Australian Open semifinals a month ago, had considerably less to say.

“Settlement’s over. Case is over,” Shelton said. “I’m just glad that we can play now, move on. My thought’s are my thoughts, but I’m ready to start playing and stop talking about it. A lot of people want to talk, and I’m honestly just here to play.”

Tommy Paul

ATP No. 10 Tommy Paul rounded out the comments with a much less forceful response on Sinner’s settlement, which I’ll also add here for completeness’s sake to round out the day’s reactions from players:

“I don’t really know,” Paul said. “I mean, I try and stay out of it as much as I can. He plays amazing tennis. He beat me before any of this stuff came out, and he beat me after. He’s been handling the situation unbelievably well; obviously he’s been winning the whole time he’s been dealing with this whole thing. But yeah, I don’t really know enough about the situation, to be completely honest. You hear so much from every side of things that I don’t really what is true and what’s not true. So it’s hard for me to really comment on it, you know?”

Further Reading:

A report by the BBC yesterday shed a bit more light on how the negotiations purportedly went down between Sinner’s legal team and WADA in advance of their trial, and I’d encourage you to read it if you haven’t yet.

Two things jumped out at me about it: the first was that Sinner’s lawyer—the similarly named Jamie Singer—said he had urged his client to take the three-month deal that was on the table.

His lawyer Singer said it was "quite tricky" to convince Sinner to take the offer.

"When I was saying 'well, look, maybe we should settle for three months', he was saying 'well, why would we do that if the first independent tribunal found it was no ban at all, why would I accept three months now?'," Singer said.

"My advice was 'one never knows what's going to happen at a hearing, we know that Wada are pushing for a year, if we don't accept their offer then they will go to court looking for a year and who knows what those three judges could do'.

"So the possibility of three months, in my view, was a good possibility."

The second part that was striking to me in the BBC was how WADA, which had originally firmly said when announcing its challenge of the original verdict that “WADA is seeking a period of ineligibility of between one and two years” was suddenly content to settle for way less, and even said that the lower end of what it had campaigned for initially would be too much.

"This was a case that was a million miles away from doping," Wenzel told BBC Sport.

"The scientific feedback that we received was that this could not be a case of intentional doping, including micro-dosing."

Had the case gone to Cas, the outcome would have either been a ban of at least a year or Sinner being cleared.

"I'm not sure that a sanction of 12 months in this case - if we'd have forced the tribunal into that position - or a case of 'no fault' would have been a good outcome," said Wenzel.

"One would have compromised an important principle under the code. The other one, in our view, would have been an unduly harsh sanction."

A moderated outcome is often a good thing in a dispute, but if WADA’s bluster about wanting Sinner banned for a year or two was ultimately hollow, they shouldn’t have been blustering like that to start with. With all the focus on how it would have been a bad example to let Sinner skate by blaming his team, I don’t think that’s a useful precedent, either.

Gracias for reading Bounces! Please subscribe if you haven’t yet for more this week in Mexico, and beyond. -Ben