Challenger Chat (Page 1 of 4)

Interesting Arvis, Chung seems like one to watch. And I didn't realise/remember that Volandri was a top 30 player.

Wow. Good for him. Guy deserves a break trying to play a sport where all the players have become 6' 6 muscle bound giants.

Sao Paulo 2

Guido Pella (#132, Argentina) def. Christian Lindell (#180, Sweden)
-- This is Pella's 8th title at this level, 6th on clay.  Interestingly, it was only his 9th final.  The guy seems to play well in finals.  He gains 27 ranking spots to get to 132, but still well away from his career-high of World #75.  However, he did not defeat anyone inside the Top 200 on the way to this title.
-- This is Lindell's first career Challenger final and, like the runner-ups from last week, he achieves his highest career ranking, up 42 spots from #222.  However, Lindell did just play a Futures final two weeks ago, where he choked after achieving a 1st-set bagel against Chile's Juan Carlos Saez.

Ostrava

Inigo Cervantes (#184, Spain) def. Adam Pavlasek (#209, Czech Republic)
-- This is Cervantes' 3rd title in 5 finals, all on clay.  His career-high ranking is #135, but he was ranked #277 coming into this tournament.  At age 25, he still has plenty of time to break into the Top 100.  Trophies like this one will help, as he defeated 3 Top 200 players, including James Ward, along the way.
-- This is, by far, 20-year-old home favorite Pavlasek's career-best result.  His 4 wins here are his first 4 wins at this level this year, and gets him to .500 on the Challenger Tour for his career.  Gained 54 ranking spots this week, and earned himself a nice win over a Top 100 player: world #95 Lucas Pouille.  Not bad for a guy who lost to this dude back in February.

An-Ning

Franko Skugor (#318, Croatia) def. Gavin van Peperzeel (#339, Australia)
-- 27-year-old journeyman Skugor may finally be turning his career around.  Ranked just inside the Top 150 back in 2011, Skugor was ranked #547 coming into this tournament.  That's right: this win gained him 229 ranking spots.  This is his 2nd Challenger title.  What makes this win even more unlikely is that Skugor retired with injury in his last tournament back in March, and in February he lost TWICE to players ranked #400+.
-- Gavin van Peperzeel is another in a long line of young Australians itching to be the next Lleyton Hewitt. At age 23, this is only the 4th Challenger tournament he has ever played, and the first on clay, so this result is remarkable in that respect.  However, his Futures record does not suggest that he will now be a dominant force at this level, and he beat no one of note on the way to this runner-up result.

Taipei

Sam Groth (#68, Australia) def. Konstantin Kravchuk (#149, Russia)
-- Groth needs no introduction.  #68 is now his best-ever ranking, although this is only his 2nd ever Challenger title.  The title couldn't come any sooner, as Groth was 1-6 in his last 7 matches on the Tour level.  This may help his get his groove back a bit.
-- Kravchuk is a 30-year-old journeyman simply looking for bigger paychecks.  This is his 5th runner-up trophy at this level, defeating slumping Yen-Hsun Lu along the way.

Turin

Marco Cecchinato (#124, Italy) def. Kimmer Coppejans (#112, Belgium)
-- This is young Cecchinato's 2nd Challenger title, gaining him 26 ranking spots to his career-best.  This is his 3rd Italian Challeneger tournament in a row, and he has steadily improved in each one.  He dropped only 15 games in his last 3 matches here.
-- Coppejans is a young guy to be on the watch for.  At only 21, he is almost in the Top 100, and just played his 4th Challenger final.  He was 3-0 in finals at this level coming in, but was simply outplayed.  Two of his Challenger titles came this year: one in Mersin, Turkey where he defeated Marsel Ilhan in the final, and another in Guangzhou, China where he defeated Hyeon Chung in the semis before going on to win the tournament.  He also has 4 Futures titles on clay, so watch out for him in the French Open qualies.

Last edited by Arvis (May. 4, 2015 9:51am)

Man Coppejans is really acing these Challenger tournaments!!

Busan
Hyeon Chung wins YET ANOTHER Challenger tournament with an easy 3 and 1 victory over Lukas Lacko.  Chung is now #69 in the world and 25-6 this year on the Challenger level.

Aix en Prevence
Robin Haase decided to head to France early to tune up for Roland Garros, and it seemed to work: he defeated Paul Henri-Mathieu in the final here, 7-6 6-2.  He's up to #78 in the world; still a far cry from his top ranking of #33.

Cali
While the higher-ranked players were all in France, over in Colombia there were great opportunities for lower-ranked players to make up some ground.  Unknown Brazilian player Fernando Romboli decided that he would be the one to capitalize, defeating Giovanni Lapentti in 3 sets in the final.  What's interesting here is that Romboli was WELL outside the Top 500 and had to QUALIFY for the main draw!  He gained almost 300 ranking spots with the win!  However, now ranked at #332, he is still well off his career high of #236.  This is a guy who has only played 2 Futures tournaments this year and only won 1 match in that span.  Qualifying for and then winning a Challenger level event could mean something huge for the future of this 26-year-old from Brazil.

Rome (Challenger)
Aljaz Bedene won this tournament just before Rome's Tour level show was set to begin.  Bedene beat hot-shot Czech newcomer Adam Pavlasek in the final, who was playing his second Challeneger final in as many tournaments.  Bedene is now ranked #74, just 3 spots off his career-best.

Karshi
Teymuraz Gabashvili won this tournament after his opponent, Evgeny Donskoy, retired in the 1st set of their final.  Gabashvili has never really lived up to his potential, but has been starting to get more solid results lately.  He's now ranked #82.

Thanks, Dwight!

Top-seeded Teymuraz Gabshvili and Indian #2 Yuki Bhambri will face off in the Samarkand final.  Could this be two Challenger titles in a row for Gabashvili?  What will this mean for his French Open campaign, a tournament he has had some moderate success in?  Will Bhambri surpass Somdev Devvarman for the top spot in India?

We'll see, Dwight.
Gabashvili won Samarkand and is now in the main draw of Geneva, so we'll see how he does. If he wins two Challengers and then follows it up with a 1st round loss, then you may be on to something.

Young upstarts Alexander Zverev and Thanasi Kokkinakis were both victorious in their respective Challengers as well. TK especially was impressive, having had to come through Qualies for the Bordeaux tournament. He continues to back up his breakthrough year.

Elsewhere, in Seoul, Hyeon Chung was FINALLY stopped by an unlikely foe: Japan's #2 player, Go Soeda. Chung had won 26 sets in a row at this level before finally dropping a tie break to Yen-Hsun Lu in the semis here. Chung will receive direct entry into Roland Garros and could prove to be a deadly 1st round opponent for anyone.
Go Soeda, on the other hand, has been slumping, this being his best win of the year. He had already played three 3-set matches in a row to get to the finals before taking the title from home favorite Chung 6-3 in the 3rd. If I had to put money on it, I would say this was a fluke win for Soeda over an exhausted young kid.

Please tell me Inigo actually said that, and you're not just making it up. 

Montanes is  probably in retirement mode, he has done squat this year. 

Intel suspect Chung will do better on grass.  There's a challenger this week in Mid-northeasten England, will have to look at the draw to see if he is in it.

Edit: No, no Chung.

Another edit: You do not like Coppejans' name?  How dare you!

Last edited by Tommy_Dearest (Jun. 6, 2015 10:41am)

Yeah, I'm wondering if Chung is just worn out.  Kid's played A LOT of tennis these last 4 weeks or so.

I'll post last week's Challenger results here soon.

Arvis

I'm more impressed by the quality of his few losses than by the wins mentioned.  Montanes hasn't done much this year, though his recent challenge runner up finish does now count as having done something.  Volandri?  Maybe several years ago, but this guy is a suspected match-fixer.  Last year, I saw a fine example of tennis display: after serving for the match against Martin Fischer, he loses many games, and on match point, allows Martin to hit a walk-off ace - by "walk off", I mean Volandri was walking off the court mid-serve; 

I've seen Connor Smith in some of the challengers past, so he snuck into a final in Asia?  I'll have to see if he beat anyone of note, probably not.

How fitting, in the grass challenger this week, there's an Englishman, Aussie, American, and James "fecking" McGee.

Yes! Ymer's first Challenger title! Pretty soon we could have a Swede back in top 100