At the end of the summer, as some of his former rivals were preparing for the US Open, Alex Dolgopolov huddled in a trench in the Zaporizhia region of Ukraine.
He knew that his small unit had been spotted and that the fire on them was getting closer to its intended target. Having spent so much time on the front lines, the former world No. 13 tennis player has learned a lot about the trajectories of 120-millimeter grenades.
He talks matter-of-factly about their 'exits' and 'arrivals', as if describing the layout of an airport.
“You sit there and after a few rounds you start to understand the order,” says Dolgopolov, his country's best male tennis player in recent times, who had reached the fourth round at Flushing Meadows six years earlier.
'We had worked 15 hours the day before and were back on at 4am, so we were all like zombies drinking energy drinks. Then we knew there was a mortar firing every two minutes, and the second one 40 seconds after that, and it was getting closer. You're three feet underground. It comes to 30 meters, then to 20 meters and then to 15 meters. That's close for 120 millimeters.
Former world number 13 Alex Dolgopolov (above) served Ukraine on the front line
'You can really feel them going through your body when they land. After it exits, you know there are about 20 seconds before the grenade flies towards you. So you hear the exit and you wait for the arrival.
“With the 120 millimeter, they say that if it lands within eight meters of you, even if the debris doesn't hit you, there's a chance that your organs will be destroyed by the explosion. You have interesting thoughts there and you can't do anything. You think: If I leave the trench, maybe you can get to the car, which is certainly the worst decision you can make.
'This one ended up being close enough to give all three of us a severe concussion, the blast went straight through me.
“But you know they don't have unlimited shells, so you know it's coming to an end, non-stop shooting is expensive. When they stopped, we went outside and continued working.”
Dolgopolov gives this vivid description of his war experiences as he sat, near midnight, in his apartment in Kiev, where he was on leave awaiting his next deployment.
We had spoken about his new life in a wide-ranging interview 12 months ago, and with the conflict still raging after the February 2022 invasion, we thought it appropriate to catch up on his year of dangerous living.
Although he has only just turned 36, he admits that his professional career now seems like a very different existence. An agile baseliner with a very distinctive, quick serve action, he was good enough to beat Rafael Nadal at Queen's in 2015 and reach the quarter-finals of the Australian Open.
Dolgopolov admits that his professional career now seems like a very different existence
When hostilities broke out, he was among the Ukrainian athletes who quickly took up arms. He subsequently became an experienced drone operator, tasked with sitting just behind the forward positions and helping direct attacks.
'You show them where to shoot, they see the video and they can work more accurately. Then there is the gathering of information for any operation on the ground, perhaps an attack. When our boys push, we control it from the air. You learn what weapons the enemy has, what it sounds like, where they can see you. When you are driving, you have to understand where the enemy can have visual contact with your car, which is dangerous.”
Among the many things he gathered are the potential costs of human error, which is likely the cause of the seizure that led to his concussion: “If someone does a bad job of hiding and they see you, they start to shooting and that's the worst. . You just try to stay in the trench and hope nothing lands on you.”
Dolgopolov says his resolve remains strong, but his tone may be less optimistic than a year ago. It is clear that he has witnessed some terrible things and has become accustomed to the reality of war. Friends and comrades from his unit died.
“We lost a really good guy just two weeks ago. A nice guy, a Georgian. He actually took a loan from the bank to come and fight for Ukraine. So that was a painful loss for us, he was 25 years old. So yes, the longer it goes on, the more people you see dying around you.
'I'm definitely not as happy as I used to be, life is more stressful. I was a very easy-going person, always smiling and joking. We still joke, but you pay the price of war, it's mentally exhausting, you pay for it.'
Ukrainian Dolgopolov enlisted in the army after quitting tennis eighteen months ago
There is also the acute frustration of not being given enough resources to fight a huge war machine.
He grudgingly agrees with the broader view that it is currently difficult to defeat an enemy that has no reservations about throwing into the mill an endless number of young Russian men, supported by a mass of military equipment.
'Unfortunately, our partners do not want us to win. It is clear to everyone that we get just enough to continue, but not to win. From our side on the battlefield, it is clear that we do not have enough to finish this,” he laments, referring to one of the operations in which he was involved.
“We had in our (attacking) formation Nissan Patrol cars, which have no armor at all. So they ended up running into an anti-tank mine. The car flew into the air and spun, and they were very lucky to survive, although one of our boys lost a leg. It's a big problem: when there's a day of fighting, the Russians deploy fifteen heavy armored vehicles, we deploy five. They have an advantage in grenades and in heavy armor. So that's why it becomes so difficult. It's just mathematically impossible. They have more people, they have more of almost everything.”
These scenarios, of course, are as far removed as you can imagine from the gilded existence a top tennis professional once knew. It is one that dozens of Russian and Belarusian players continue to enjoy and benefit from, with Wimbledon and British tennis having to withdraw from their stance to ban them this summer, under threat of heavy sanctions from the tours.
The policy of his former sport is something else that he accepts: 'We see the decisions that have been made. There's not much to say about it. I see what's happening in tennis, some results, because I'm on Twitter (X), but I don't know the last time I watched a match. It seems like a different life.”
Adrian Mannarino is among a handful of ATP players who have agreed to play in St. Petersburg
One thing he is excited about is an unofficial exhibition tournament being held this weekend in St. Petersburg.
A handful of his immediate contemporaries who are still active, such as Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut and Frenchman Adrian Mannarino, have chosen to join the participating Russians (as independent contractors they are free to do so). Dolgopolov can barely spit out his contempt for them.
'That's a shame, especially from the European players. I don't understand that, I don't know what they're thinking. They just get the black money. The Russians threaten Europe every day with a nuclear attack, with energy blackmail, and they still choose to go there and make some money. Those guys aren't desperate for money. I mean, Bautista has been touring for fifteen years and Mannarino is pretty much the same. So for me to see that's a joke. It is pathetic.'
As for the conflict, he has no more idea than anyone else of how long he will remain embroiled in it: 'All projects for the future must be put on hold. I don't plan anything, you know. I plan one day, two days, three days, whatever. How can you do that when you're at war?'
