Former world tennis number one and winner of two Grand Slam tournaments Marat Safin has always attracted public attention with his unusual behavior.
22/04/2026 16:34
Photo: Instagram
Marat Safin shared with his fans pictures from his travels in the Atlas Mountains.
During his playing career, in addition to his exceptional talent, he was also known for his fiery nature, numerous outbursts of anger on and off the field, and an extremely exciting love life. Today, however, he appears to be a completely different person – he has replaced fame with silence and luxury with simplicity.
While many of his peers remained tied down by luxury and lucrative sponsorship deals after their careers ended, Safin chose a completely different path. The latest photos he shared on social media show him in the heart of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, where he spends his time in almost ascetic conditions, surrounded by wild nature.
With a short but powerful message – “Our home is mother nature” – the former champion made it clear how much his outlook on life has changed.
In the published pictures, Safin is almost unrecognizable. With a turban on his head and dark glasses, with a backpack on his back, he looks more like a desert traveler than a former Grand Slam champion. Instead of the luxury that athletes of this caliber are used to, he chooses simplicity – tea on the ground, modest meals and a life without comfort.
One of the photos particularly surprised the fans – Safin is sleeping on a thin mattress in the middle of the mountain, using a backpack as a pillow, while there is nothing but a tent and a rough landscape around him.
It’s no secret that Safin has previously sought meaning in life outside of sports, traveling to remote parts of the world such as Tibet and Peru. It seems that now he finally found what he was looking for – peace away from the city noise and the tennis scene.
During his playing career, the controversial Russian was known for his explosive nature and violent reactions on the tennis courts. The folks at Head, whose racquets Safin played with during his career, calculated that he broke 1,055 racquets.
The currently 46-year-old Russian, a member of the Hall of Fame, has earned more than $15 million during his career. To this day, he is considered one of the most controversial personalities in the world of tennis.
Safin has always been different from many of his colleagues. He liked to get drunk the night before a match and one of the craziest moves was when he brought up to three female partners to the box at the 2002 Australian Open.
Safin allegedly played the Australian Open final drunk. His former colleague Daniel Köllerer once revealed that he saw the Russian drinking alcohol before a match. “I drank alcohol throughout my career, but for the first time at the age of 24. Then I saw Safin drinking before the final of the Australian Open. I thought that if I can’t move from 150th place sober and he plays the final drunk, then alcohol is not so bad. Safin was so drunk the night before, as if he was celebrating his birthday. Or as if he had already celebrated the victory at the Australian Open,” the former Austrian tennis player once said.
Today, Safin lives in seclusion, says he has neither friends nor a girlfriend, and in an interview with Russian media, he shocked the public when he talked about his daily life. “I don’t believe in God. I don’t have a girlfriend, a wife, I’m not a child anymore. I like to travel. I doubt that Machu Picchu was built by humans,” Safin revealed in an interview.
“At the moment I’m not doing anything. I wake up between eight and ten, I walk, I travel. I’m not interested in tennis. I’ll play a veteran tournament here and there, but what’s the point? Does someone who ends his career and during retirement start doing the same job again? That’s stupid. Such a tournament serves me more to lose weight, when I feel like I’ve gained a kilo or two,” said Safin, who believes that religion does not exist.
The former heartbreaker now lives only with cats and gave up his daughter Eva Jakubovská. “I don’t have a daughter. That’s what people think, that’s what the newspapers write. But what am I going to do… It’s hard to stop them, I only know that I don’t have a daughter,” said Safin, who won’t let anyone into the house.
“My house is a sacred place. I don’t want anyone to enter it except me. Well, my two cats can, they live with me. Basically, I adore animals and I prefer cats to dogs. Cats calm me down, they sense a person when I feel bad, they come to me and calm me down,” added the former best tennis player in the world.
