Roman Safiullin came into Wimbledon as World No. 92 with just six match wins on the season. It made sense that he wouldn’t be staying at the Ritz-Carlton.
If we’re being generous, his budget hotel, about a 30-minute drive to The All England Club, can be described as ’boutique’. There’s barely room on the floor to plonk a tennis bag and certainly no gym for stretching.
Yet it seems to be working for the reserved 25-year-old. Despite a guaranteed pay day of around US$435,000 by reaching the Wimbledon quarter-finals on debut, Safiullin isn’t ready to break with his routine and upgrade to a hotel with more spacious rooms and better amenities.
“Why should I change it? Nice hotel. Of course it’s not like five stars, but I like the bed,” he said. “Everything for me fits. It’s not so far actually to go and not so much traffic. Why should I change it?”
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The hotel nicely matches Safiullin’s low-key personality and workmanlike game. But after defeating Denis Shapovalov in the fourth round Sunday to set a quarter-final clash with eighth seed Jannik Sinner, Safiullin is looking to upgrade his career to a new tier by becoming a Grand Slam semi-finalist… or better.
He’s also looking to atone for a mix of bad planning and bad fortune that saw him sit out Roland Garros.
“I forgot to enter the qualies to Roland Garros because I had the match against Zapata [at the Mutua Madrid Open], and I completely forgot that I needed to enter and I was not entering in advance,” he said.
“I stayed first out for [Roland Garros] main draw. But as it turned out I got injured in Rome, and [withdrew] from Geneva, so I wouldn’t have been fit to play qualies anyway.”
He didn’t plan it this way, but missing Roland Garros turned out to be a positive development for his Wimbledon chances. He played all three weeks of the lead-in grass-court season, building on an inauspicious start in Stuttgart (a first-round qualifying loss to World No. 295 Benjamin Hassan).
He qualified in Halle with strong wins over Benjamin Bonzi and Aslan Karatsev, before falling to German Jan-Lennard Struff in the first round. He also came through the qualifying rounds in Mallorca, before falling to eventual finalist Lloyd Harris in the quarter-finals. That gave him eight grass-court matches heading into Wimbledon.
“I played all the grass tournaments leading in. I didn’t do really well on some of them, but a little bit, step by step, I was getting the game on the grass court,” Safiullin said. “Here, adapt a little bit, because here is different on grass than in Halle or Mallorca and adapt a little bit the game and play now in quarter-final.”
Safiullin is a late bloomer. On the ITF junior circuit he had wins over Daniil Medvedev, Andrey Rublev and Karen Khachanov, who all have cracked the Top 10. But his own rise – this week to No. 43 in the Pepperstone Live ATP Rankings (and Top 30 if he beats Sinner) – has taken time, due in part to a serious injury he sustained shortly after winning the 2015 Australian Open boys’ championships.
“My biggest injury, it was after Australian Open junior championship,” he said. “It was a shoulder and it takes long time to recover. Then after I recover, I got another injury with my right ankle.
“It takes a lot of time to get back on track. For some people maybe shorter; for some people like me, longer.”
Safiullin has played Sinner once before, at the 2022 ATP Cup. Back then he was ranked 167 and Sinner was already in the Top 10. Punching above his weight, Safiullin was highly competitive before falling 7-6(6), 6-3.
“That was basically my first experience to play against Top 10 player,” he said. “It was really tough one for me. Especially in the first set I remember I made some problems for him, so I hope to make also some good notes from that match and to improve the tactic and my performance for the next match.
“It’s hard to realise that I made it to quarter-finals, especially on my first Wimbledon main draw. I didn’t play a lot in my career on the grass court, so I’m really happy that I could make it and hopefully I could make it more.”
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