Sport has a habit of throwing up names who look destined for greatness — the technique that sets them apart, the flashes of brilliance that build a wave of hype — only for them to vanish before they ever get there. Most fade quietly into obscurity. A few crash spectacularly, taking down giants along the way. Few have captured that second kind of story better than Ernests Gulbis — in many ways, he was Nick Kyrgios before Kyrgios ever arrived on tour.
“But he is the champion, and — well, I lost against him in Indian Wells when I also thought I played better than him. He is solid, he didn’t do anything special, I made mistakes, and so he won. Gulbis had the game to trouble even the best on their day — a booming serve, a fearless backhand, powerful and aggressive from the baseline. And he proved it. The Latvian, who reached a career-high ranking of world No. The loss triggered a memorable exchange in the press room. Off the court, his opinions caused as much noise as his results. He spent his final years drifting through Challenger events before quietly stepping away.
10, beat Novak Djokovic , with whom he had trained as a teenager in Munich, got the better of Roger Federer twice — one of those at a Grand Slam — and more than once pushed Rafael Nadal to the brink on clay. By 2017, he had slipped outside the world’s top 500, and the closest he came to reliving his old glories was a shock first-round win over Juan Martin del Potro at Wimbledon, watched by a stunned Centre Court crowd. He confirmed his retirement in 2024, more than a year after his last competitive match — closing the book on a career that once had Nadal rattled and Federer beaten twice.
Because he felt the sport was too tough a life for women, a year later, at the same French Open where he reached his career-best semi-final, he sparked a very different kind of controversy — suggesting he didn’t want his own sisters following him into professional tennis.
“I thought I was the better player in the match,” Gulbis said. In 2013, he called the Big Four “boring,” telling Sports Illustrated tennis was missing the fire of boxing or basketball, that players needed to say “I kicked his ass” instead of politely praising an opponent. In 2009, he had also been arrested in Sweden for soliciting a prostitute during a tournament week, calling it a “misunderstanding” before paying a fine and returning to the court.
One of them belonged to Gulbis. In the same tournament, Gulbis ran into Nadal in the semi-final and pushed the King of Clay to three sets before falling 6-4, 3-6, 6-4. The set mattered more than it looked at the time: Nadal went on to complete a perfect 22-0 European clay season that year, sweeping Monte Carlo, Rome, Madrid and the French Open without losing a single match — and dropping only two sets along the way.
Nadal walked away rattled enough to call him “top-10 material” afterward — a fair admission of how close the Spaniard had come to an upset.
They eventually went different ways — but before that gap opened up, there was a moment in January 2009 when Gulbis first created real optimism around his game. 3, in the first round of the brand-new Brisbane International just weeks before Djokovic’s title defence, Gulbis pulled off a 6-4, 6-4 upset — his biggest win to date. 40, he walked onto the Foro Italico courts in April 2010 and stunned top-ranked Roger Federer in three sets — the Swiss star’s first opening-round exit at the tournament in eight years.
But Gulbis cared little for the sport, and even less for his own talent. For a player who treated tennis like a hobby, an afterthought, the sport gave little back in return. The wave of promise that built around him crashed just as fast as it had formed, and he disappeared. Gulbis and Djokovic trained together as teenagers at the Niki Pilic Academy in Munich, sharing courts long before either of them meant anything on tour. Taking on defending Australian Open champion Djokovic, then the world No. Gulbis went one better a year later, in his first real breakthrough. Ranked a modest world No. Federer left the press conference admitting his game simply wasn’t there that day.
