Alexander Bublik, the resident eccentric of professional men’s tennis, has the lyrics to two different Eminem songs tattooed on his arm. Doubles specialists, he’s said, aren’t “real athletes,” though Bublik himself reached the doubles final of the 2021 French Open. The 28-year-old Kazakh has quoted Kung Fu Panda to cast doubt on Jannik Sinner’s doping status, and called the tennis exhibited by greats like Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal “boring.” Once, while losing to an injured and past-his-prime Dominic Thiem, Bublik loudly chastised himself for “giving careers back to disabled people.” He hates tennis with “all his heart,” he said  in 2020, and “detests every day I have to play it.” Just 11 months ago, in fact, he nearly quit the sport entirely when his ranking nosedived to 82nd in the world — his lowest in six years. “I went to Las Vegas for three days to switch off,” he told the reporter Ben Rothenberg of his slump. “Since then, I’ve been on a mission.”

A weekend at the slots seems to have worked wonders. Bublik enters this week’s Australian Open with a career-high ranking of number ten in the world, having just defeated world number five Lorenzo Musetti in the finals of a tune-up tournament in Hong Kong. And though he’s best known for trickery, showmanship, and self-sabotage — random and........

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