Challengers: Week 15

Last week, the challenger tour took players around the globe to 3 continents and two different surfaces. As per usual, there was a healthy mix of winning done by both members of the “young gun” class and the “blast from the past” armada. Here’s a recap of the action:

*Athens, Greece (€85,000 +H): This was one more of the countless European hard-court tournaments of the season. The draw had the presence of only 2 non-Euros (American/Filipino Treat Huey and Mexican Santiago Gonzalez), and 4 local wild cards (all of whom were defeated in the first round). No real surprises happened until Benjamin Becker (No.1) was upset by Swiss Stephane Bohli in the QF. The semis were very much expected too, as Dmitri Tursunov and Matthias Bachinger continued their great form in 2011. Both reached the final and were set to go against one another, except that the rain wasn’t planning on letting that happen without a fight. After the Sunday session was postponed, and with the forecast for Monday not looking much better, Tursunov decided to withdraw, blaiming it on a knee injury (from his official announcement on Twitter). With the “win” and the title, Bachinger took home 12,500 euros and enough points to crack the top 100 for the first time in his career.                                 

*Johannesburg 2, South Africa ($100,000 +H): As opposed to the action in Greece, this South African challenger saw a great run by the local players. Most seeds advanced throughout the draw, with the only major upset being young-gun and former junior star Greg Jones (Australia) beating ace-machine and Luxemburg’s finest Gilles Muller in a straight sets victory. It was a better than usual week for Jones, but he couldn’t get past Rik de Voest in the semis. De Voest met fellow South African Izak Van der Merwe, with the latter taking the title with a hard-fought 67 75 63 win. The 27-year old showed great form at home again (semis at Johannesburg 1 CH) and reached a career high ranking of 134.

                                          CREDIT: SATA (South African Tennis Association)

*Tallahassee, USA($50,000): This one was also another stereotypical American challenger, in which more than half the players were from the US and Canada. And as it was the case with the Greek challenger, the players that came into the tournament showing the best form were the ones lifting the silverware at the end of the week. Rainer Schuettler was the third German No.1 seed eliminated early this week (Dustin Brown in SA and Becker in Athens), paving the way for an All-American semi-final that featured the eternal young-gun (Donald Young), a former local superstar (James Blake), a challenger tour specialist (Bobby Reynolds) and a young veteran on the comeback trail (Wayne Odesnik). Donald Young put on a display of tennis and poise in beating the more experienced Blake. It is worth noting that Young bounced back after losing the second set 61, and closed the match with authority, 63. Moreover, the Illinois-native finished out the week by beating Odesnik in the final and re-entering the top-100 at the 98^th spot. It is too early to tell whether Young has finally found a way to harness his immense talent, but he has already beaten Andy Murray this season as has risen about 50 ranking spots in the last 6 weeks.

*Blumenau, Brazil ($35,000 +H): This week’s Brazilian challenger was definitely a tale of 2 halves. After R1 was completed, the top and bottom of the draw could have not been any more different. At the top, No.1 seed Ricardo Mello was ousted in the first round as the Argentinean legion took over, comprising ¾ of the QF and 100% of the semi-finalists. There, Jose Acasuso, a former Davis Cup player who was once ranked 20^th in the world, defeated 4  compatriots (Andres Molteni, Martin Alund, Leonardo Mayer and Diego Junqueira) to reach his first CH final since Tunis, almost a year ago. The bottom part much messier and entertaining as youngsters Javier Marti (‘92/Spain), Marcelo Demoliner (‘89/Brazil), Facundo Bagnis (‘90/Argentina) and Aljaz Bedene (’89/Slovenia) advanced. Although Bagnis and Marti were favored to advance because of their current form, fatigue kicked in and both were defeated. Demoliner continued his dream run by beating Bedene and reaching his first CH final. However, he could not match Acasuso’s talent and experience, dropping the final with a 62 62 score. Acasuso rose to 178 thanks to his victory and has his sights set on re-claiming his spot in the top 100.

                                             CREDIT: Cristiano Andujar / Divulgacao

*Rome, Italy (€30,000 +H): This challenger featured some of the best young-prospects in Europe (Ignatik, Stebe, Carreno-Busta, Klizan, Donskoy, Schoorel, Fabbiano) and likely the oldest guy on the tour (our friend and once-upon-a-time-great Thomas Muster, receiver of yet another pointless Wild Card). Although most of the youngsters were wiped out early, two of them kept fighting and landed in the final. Former Junior No. 1 Martin Klizan beat Simon Greul, top-seeded Andreas Haider-Maurer and Rabat-winner Ivo Minar to set up a meeting with Thomas Schoorel from the Netherlands. The Dutch wiped out veterans (Pashanski, A.Beck) and young guns (Carreno-Busta, Stebe) alike to set up the class of ’89 clash. At the end it was the less-heralded prospect who prevailed, as Schoorel took the title with a 75 16 63 win. Both achieved career highs this week, with Schoorel at 126 and Klizan at 153.

The curious case of Federico Delbonis and the success of his opponents

Here's the English version of my previous post (sorry, still trying to figure out the blog's layout)

Sometimes when the desired results don’t come one start to look for explanations, specially when talent is present and the opponents are the same as before. Moreover, in a burgeoning career it’s rare to see that, suddenly, one starts to lose more often than usual. Surely there are a dozen factors that only the player, his coach and his entourage know about. It could be an injury, a change in style, a new serve, or simply a bad stretch cause by a decrease in confidence. Here I present you a different angle, and a theory that has been proving itself week after week. But first, let me give you a little background

I introduce you the story of Federico Delbonis of Argentina. Born in 1990, he reached his career ranking high in July of 2010 (117 in the world) after a meteoric rise in 2009 that saw him go, in a matter of months, from barely qualifying to Futures to give Stan Wawrinka all he could handle at the ATP in Gstaad, Switzerland. Delbonis then finished 2010 ranked 160 after a subpar showing in the South American challengers of the Copa Petrobras.

Delbonis then started 2011 with his sights set on breaking into the top 100, make it to the big leagues and play in the Grand Slams. The problem is that, as of mid-April, his current ranking is still 157 and he has to defend a significant amount of points from the same time last year. This is because Delbonis has lost this year to opponents he has already beaten in the past, or that he should beat if one takes his potential and their rankings into account. Here are some examples:

In his first tournament of the year, Delbonis reached the semi-finals of the Sao Paulo CH, where he lost to Ricardo Mello, the experienced Brazilian.  After beating Delbonis, Mello went on to win the title with a 62 61 win over 1990-born Rafael Camilo. Weeks later, also in Brazil, Delbonis lost to Facundo Bagnis in the second round of the Brazil’s ATP at Costa do Sauipe. Bagnis ended up advancing to the main draw before losing in the first round to Portugal’s Rui Machado. Besides, Bagnis today is going through the best stretch of his young career, setting career high rankings almost weekly.

At the beginning of March, Delbonis went to try his luck at the Salinas CH in Ecuador. There, after reaching the QFs, he lost to compatriot and 1988-born Andres Molteni, a veteran of the Futures circuit taking his first steps at the challenger level. After beating Delbonis with a hard-fought 64 in the third set, Molteni went on to win the tournament, his first at that level, beating former 41-ranked Argentine Horacio Zeballos. 

His schedule continued in Morocco, where Delbonis was forced to play his second round and quarter final matches during the same day because of a rain delay. In the second round he beat Slovak Ivo Klec in 3 sets, and later battled out another 3-setter against Czech Ivo Minar, before running out of gas and losing. Minar went on to win the challenger (played in Rabat), beating another challenger veteran in Aussie Peter Luczak.

The following week, also in Morocco (Marrakech), Delbonis surprisingly lost in the first round against Frenchman Augustin Gensse, 200 in the world at the time. Unsurprisingly, however (because of my theory), Gensse enjoyed a dream week in which he beat compatriot Desnieres de Veigy and the up and coming Spaniard Albert Ramos-Vinolas before being eliminated in the semis by Portugal’s Rui Machado. By mid-April Gensse had achieved a new career high.

Last week, Delbonis flew to Monza, Italy to take part in a new challenger. After getting through R1, he lost in the second round to German Julian Reister, a match in which he had 3 match points in the second set tie-breaker. As you can probably imagine by now, Reister completed one of the best weeks of his life by beating fellow German Andres Beck in the semis and the local favorite Alessio Di Mauro in the final to, not only win the title but also to enter the top 100 in the world for the first time.

And here’s the cherry that goes on top: Delbonis participated at the end of last week in the qualy for the Masters 1000 at Monte Carlo, but was eliminated in the first round by Portuguese Frederico Gil. And guess what? Gil not only won his QR2 match to make it to the main draw; he also beat Sergiy Stakhovsky, Florian Mayer and GAEL MONFILS to advance to his first QF at such tournament level. And the dream continues: he plays Andy Murray tomorrow and then a possible date with a dude named Radael Nadal. Can he make it happen? (editor’s note = he lost to Murray 62 61. Oh well…)

Probably this is just a random correlation. But weirder things have happened before. I just want to say that it’s clearly possible that sometimes a player is unlucky enough to, somehow, bring the best in his opponents and lead them to have their best week of the year. The only sure thing is that if my theory keeps “proving itself” throughout the year, everyone is going to want to beat Delbonis because, unfortunately, he has become a sort of lucky charm…

Challengers: Week 14

Challenger tennis action last week happened in Colombia, Brazil and Italy. All 3 tournaments had compelling stories, ranging from over-the-hill veterans on the comeback trail, to one of tennis’ future superstars making his first great run, to young veterans of the challenger tour making earning results that inched them closer to the “promised land”.

***The Brazilian tournament happened in Recife, and at first glance one can note that the cut-off was very low, meaning that players that usually can’t make the main draw had a chance at some serious points and ranking-improvement. This is very weird from a supply and demand point of view, especially with the shortage of challengers in South America and the incredible abundance of talent throughout the continent. The explanation can be found in the fact that the tournament was played on a hard surface, and that another challenger occurred a few miles north on neighboring Colombia. And since the Colombian challenger offered more price money, points and a friendlier surface (clay), most of the players within the ranking range decided to opt for the land of coffee (?).

With that said, the field in Recife was more than half filled by local players (17 to be exact), in what turned out to be almost an all-star display of the future of Brazilian tennis. Wild cards were awarded to Bruno Sant’Anna (’93), Tiago Fernandez (’93), Guilherme Clezar (’92) and Augusto Laranja (’92). Other young guns included Brazilians Fernando Romboli, Jose Pereira, Tiago Slonik and Daniel Silva, along with Tsung-Hua Yang, Gastao Elias, Facundo Arguello, Ilya Belyaev and half-Brazilian (and half-Swedish) Christian Lindell. The field also displayed a few wily veterans (Japan’s Ito, Ecuador’s Lapentti and Switzerland’s Chiudinelli, the top 3 seeds).

Experience prevailed as Ito, Lapentti and Julio Silva all made the semi-finals. However, the fourth one was a happy surprise for the locals, as 18 year old Tiago Fernandez advanced thanks to a favorable draw. He took down Tiago Lopez, Bruno Sant’Anna and Guilherme Clezar, before shocking Julio Silva and advancing to a final that he couldn’t play because of fatigue and back pain. He still was awarded 48 points which vaulted him to 380 in the world, obviously a career high and a very impressive placement considering his age. Meanwhile, Japan’s 22-year old Tatsuma Ito won his second challenger in Brazil in less than a year, and moves closer to the door step of the big guns, sitting at 135 in the world.

***Meanwhile, the Colombian city of Pereira hosted a challenger of their own, which featured most of the remaining top guns of the continent, and the token European clay-court veteran trying to make a run. The draw again was very interesting from a young-guns viewpoint. Argentineans Facundo Bagnis (fresh of a title in Barranquilla), Marco Trungelliti and Andres Molteni were present, along with Spain’s Javier Marti, locals Eduardo Struvay and Juan Sebastian Cabal and Brazil’s Joao Souza.

Once again experience trumped youth, and Paolo Lorenzi of Italy took the title beating Rogerio Dutra Da Silva of Brazil. However, Javier Marti of Spain made his first challenger semi-final and took Dutra Da Silva to 3 sets before losing 16 62 75. It’s also worth mentioning that Argentina’s Marco Trungelliti came all the way from the qualys to beat Leandro Mayer and Victor Estrella, before losing to Juan Sebastian Cabal.  This led 1990-born Trungelliti to his career high ranking of 357.

***Finally Monza hosted yet another Italian challenger, once again played on clay. Not many young players in this tournament to talk about, except maybe for Federico Delbonis (Argentina), Evgeny Donskoy (Russia) and the up and coming Kenny De Schepper of France. 3 Germans made the semi-finals (Andreas Beck, Julian Reister and Simon Greul) along with Italian veteran Alessio Di Mauro. Reister took the title, winning 63 on the third against the Italian, and jumping to a career high ranking of 100 in the world. The 25 year old was having a very sub-par year for a player of his ranking, but the win in Italian soil got him over the hill and into a club that includes dudes like Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. Congrutalations to him!

To wrap this up, there has to be a mention to Thomas Muster, who somehow keeps getting WCs into the Italian challengers, even though he can’t seem to win a set against his younger counterparts. It’s always fun to see a blast from the past like that, but if the results are not what you want, then I think it’s time to abort the mission and run back into retirement. Come on Muster, stop wasting people’s time and precious wild cards. Hey, here’s an idea for a change. Give your wild cards to Dominik Thiem, the future tennis star of your country. Just saying…