Andrey Rublev has leaped to the head of the Next Gen class this week

NEW YORK— “I mean, look, I know about Next Gen tournament, because all I hear these few days is Next Gen, Next Gen...”

Those were the (slightly irritated) words of Novak Djokovic in Rome this spring after he was asked one too many times about the inaugural Next Gen Finals, a year-end ATP event for players 21 and younger that will be held in Milan in November. It was easy to sympathize with Djokovic; anyone who follows tennis on a regular basis has heard a lot about the Next Gen in 2017.

We’ve heard it a lot at this year’s US Open, too. But while the phrase has been the same, the names have suddenly changed. Over the last seven days, a mini-coup has taken place among the ATP’s youngest guns.

When the tournament started, the talk was all about 21-year-old Alexander Zverev, who won the Masters 1000 event in Montreal, and 22-year-old Nick Kyrgios, who reached the final of the Masters 1000 in Cincinnati. But Zverev and Kyrgios were gone by Wednesday; by the weekend, the buzz was centered on two other, younger players: 18-year-old Denis Shapovalov of Canada, who reached the fourth round, and 19-year-old Andrey Rublev of Russia, who on Monday became the youngest player to reach the Open quarterfinals since Andy Roddick did it in 2001.

Is it time to start talking about the Next Next Gen?

While Shapovalov spent the first week leaping across Ashe Stadium, chatting on ESPN and hearing himself compared to everyone from John McEnroe to Roger Federer, Rublev was grunting and grinding in relative anonymity on the outer courts. But if the Canadian put on the more spectacular performances, the Russian has been as solid as anyone in the draw. He has dropped just one set, and he pounded two Top 15 opponents, Grigor Dimitrov and David Goffin, into straight-set submission. Suddenly, Rublev has done something that none of the other 21 and unders, including Zverev, has done: reach a Grand Slam quarterfinal. Not surprisingly, it all feels a little surreal to the kid known as “Rubl.”

“This is amazing, because we used to joke before about second week, about how good it [would be] to be in the second week,” he said. “Now I’m here. It feels good.”

Rather than coming out of nowhere, though, Rublev’s breakthrough feels like the final piece in the Next Gen puzzle. Many of us have been waiting for Rublev to make this type of move since he won the 2014 French Open junior title as a 16-year-old. With his wiry build, emotional volatility and lank hair that flopped from one side to the other as he threw himself into each shot, he struck me as a Baby Zverev. The Moscow native was a couple years behind the German in terms of strength and maturity, but the fundamentals—i.e., the shot-making and the intensity—were in place. When Rublev isn’t firing forehand winners, he’s raging at himself; if things get really bad, he’s been known to try to destroy his shirt.

It took a couple of years, but Rublev has made that intensity work for him, rather than against him. This spring, he won his first ATP event, in Umag, and cracked the Top 50. Watching Rublev up close at the Open, what’s impressed me most is his relentlessness, as well as the lack of any visible hesitation in his decision-making. His father, also named Andrey, was a professional boxer, and there’s a condensed sense of aggression to the son’s game—he wins points with quick combinations of shots. And whether it’s his serve, his forehand or his backhand, there’s nothing wasted in any of Rublev’s motions.

He also knows his strengths, and knows how to make the most of them; the vast majority of balls he hit against Goffin on Monday were forehands. Seeing Rublev backpedal for a forehand and let out a grunt as he drove the ball from one corner to the other, I felt like I was watching the modern baseline game boiled down to its diamond-hard essentials.

“He’s playing well. He’s playing really well,” Goffin said of Rublev. “Has a good forehand. He’s hitting the ball really hard, and he takes the ball early.

“It was tough for me, because he was playing really fast, left and right.”

Left, right, left, right: Like a boxer.

While the father was a fighter, Rublev’s mother and sister are tennis coaches. Marat Safin was his first tennis hero, until he was superseded by a certain Spaniard.

“He was my idol,” Rublev said of Rafael Nadal. “I was buying the same clothes as him, all the new collections. I was trying to copy.”

Now Rublev will face Nadal in the quarterfinals. He didn’t hesitate to admit how he feels about him.

“He’s the real champion,” Rublev said of Rafa. “I’m just going to enjoy it.”

For the record, the Russian said something similar before he faced Goffin, and we saw how that turned out. This time, if he can pull off another upset, there’ll be no denying that the Next Gen is ready to graduate to bigger things, and that Rublev has moved to the head of the class.