What an eventful week that was on the ATP Challenger Tour with many compelling storylines. Fabian Marozsan won the title in Perugia and broke the top 100, while Andy Murray completed the Surbiton/Nottingham double to give himself a fantastic grass preparation ahead of Queen’s Club and Wimbledon. Kei Nishikori, meanwhile, returned after 20 months of inactivity and instantly claimed the trophy in Palmas del Mar, Vitaliy Sachko won his maiden Challenger title and Felipe Meligeni Alves took five straight deciding-set wins to triumph in Lyon. Read back on last week’s action:
Nottingham
Murray won the Challenger in Surbiton the week before and maintained that form going in Nottingham. By the time he made the final, he had an 18-1 set win/loss record on grass this season. Dominic Stricker was the one who pushed him the hardest when they met in the quarterfinals. The Swiss was even briefly up a break in the second set, but ended up falling to the smart grinding tennis of Murray, backed up by an improved first serve.
Arthur Cazaux hadn’t played a professional match on grass and started from the qualifying in Nottingham. Doesn’t sound like the recipe for success, does it? He was almost out in the second match too, 1-3 down in the deciding set against Daniel Cox. The talented Frenchman soon found his footing though and went on to produce a few fantastic displays on the way to the final, not dropping a set in the four matches in the main draw.
Cazaux’s serve was giving his opposition fits throughout the week, but Murray, perhaos unsurprisingly, was just able to neutralize it so much better than anyone else. He also dragged the Frenchman into many long rallies, using his grinding and court craft to outplay him in these exchanges. Murray secured his fifth Challenger title with a 6-4 6-4 win in the final. He’ll now head over to the ATP 500 event in Queen’s Club, while Cazaux received a special exempt for Ilkley.
Perugia
Edoardo Lavagno made people notice him recently with a number of successful qualifying attempts for Challengers and then a quarterfinal in Turin. The 24-year-old is having his breakthrough campaign this season and the Perugia run is just another example of that. It almost didn’t happen as Oriol Roca Batalla served for the match against him in the second round. The Italian survived and played a phenomenal match to beat Alexandre Muller and make his first Challenger final.
Marozsan didn’t follow up his amazing run in Rome right away (including an upset over the world #1 Carlos Alcaraz), losing in the second round of his next two events (Roland Garros and Heilbronn). The 23-year-old was absolutely perfect in Perugia though, not losing a set on the way to the final and only dropping his serve once. As it turned out, the championship match would be the one to decide whether he breaks the top 100 or not this week.
While Marozsan would eventually get broken for the second time that week, it happened when he was in full control of the match already. He was able to successfully rush Lavagno and force the Italian to play the match on his terms. Marozsan claimed his third Challenger title 6-2 6-3 and with that secured his top 100 debut. Both finalists are heading over to Montechiarugolo next.
Bratislava
After a subpar 2022 campaign, Sachko is slowly getting back up there. The Ukrainian made three Challenger quarterfinals this year prior to this week, but didn’t progress to the final four on any occasion. In Bratislava, he had to start from the qualifying draw and after blasting through it, he was in trouble again at the last eight stage against Federico Coria. His opponent even served for the match but it was Sachko who eventually pulled through 4-6 7-5 6-3.
Dimitar Kuzmanov had just two Challenger quarterfinals to his name in 2023, but one of them came in his previous event in Troisdorf. The Bulgarian pulled off a great win over Zsombor Piros in the second round, before stopping the up-and-coming Jerome Kym in the quarterfinals. The final four saw him pitted against the top seed and main title favourite in Bratislava, Alex Molcan, only to dispatch the struggling Slovak 6-0 6-1.
Sachko dropped the opening set quite quickly, but soon found more consistency and started firing his trademark huge returns. Kuzmanov wasn’t willing to let go though and even while it seemed like he was starting to get overwhelmed, he just wasn’t going away. The Ukrainian served for the match at 5-4, but eventually had to take it in the deciding tie-breaker. Sachko won his maiden Challenger title 2-6 6-2 7-6, having missed out on two prior opportunities back in 2021.
Lyon
Meligeni Alves had been on an upward trajectory recently, making the semifinals in Oeiras and almost qualifying for the French Open. The Brazilian never really had it easy in Lyon, going down 1-4 in the third to Matheus Pucinelli de Almeida in the opening round. He survived and won his next three matches in deciding sets as well, despite Alejandro Moro Canas serving for the win at one point. Meligeni Alves secured his first final in 11 months.
Alexander Ritschard’s upward trajectory started only in this event, but the Swiss fought back from one set down against Harold Mayot and sort of made these comebacks his bread and butter last week. He managed to take down Salvatore Caruso this way as well before snapping the run of the 2022 French Open boys’ singles champion Gabriel Debru in the semifinals. He did it, you guessed it, after dropping the opening set 6-7 6-3 6-2.
Long matches were definitely the theme of the week for Meligeni Alves and after winning the opener 6-4, he didn’t even take a game in the second set. The Brazilian got the chance to serve for the match at 5-4 in the decider, but it soon went to a thrilling deciding tie-break. Ritschard saved a match point with a stunning forehand down the line and his opponent responded with an absolutely perfect backhand in that direction two points later. Meligeni Alves took his third Challenger title 6-4 0-6 7-6, winning all five matches in deciding sets. He’ll now play in Blois, while Ritschard took a special exempt for Ilkley.
Palmas del Mar
Michael Zheng was the runner-up at Wimbledon juniors last year and after a year playing college tennis for Stanford, he was able to start showing up in Challenger events over the summer. After a decent showing in Little Rock and a first qualifying round exit at Tyler, the 19-year-old produced a stunning run in Palmas del Mar racing through his first few matches. He then had to come back from a break down in the third against Alexis Galarneau and then edged out Beibit Zhukayev in a deciding tie-break.
Injuries had kept Nishikori away from the court since October 2021, but it quickly became clear that the Japanese was right to take his time and only came back when he knew he could be competitive again. His consistency wasn’t always there yet, but Nishikori pulled off a fightback win against Mitchell Krueger in the second round and looked absolutely breathtaking at times on the way to the final, not dropping another set.
Nishikori came out all guns blazing and taking the ball early to put a lot of pressure on Zheng. The youngster came up with some quality shotmaking from time to time, but couldn’t really keep up with the legendary Japanese. It suddenly got tricky when the former world #4 couldn’t serve out the match twice from 6-2 5-2 but in the end, Nishikori won his seventh Challenger title 6-2 7-5 and despite coming into the week unranked, he already finds himself inside the top 500. Both finalists are likely to appear in Bloomfield Hills in a couple of weeks and it is unclear whether they’ll be playing something until then.
Challenger Tour magic:
Michael Zheng is incredible. What a set he's just played against Alexis Galarneau and I think the best way to talk about it is to show it to you – literally a perfect return game to wrap it up.
📷: @ATPChallenger pic.twitter.com/tk0ywQYJuH— Damian Kust (@damiankust) June 16, 2023
PONTO ABSOLUTAMENTE BIZARRO!
Após 🇧🇷Gustavo Heide isolar a devolução de saque, 🇦🇺Bernard Tomic, que tinha achado que o seu serviço havia saído, toca na bola aleatoriamente e perde o ponto!
Detalhe: era set point pro brasileiro!pic.twitter.com/SMN0WjYTqZ
— Tênis Para Além do Óbvio 🎾 (Alemzão) (@AlemTenis) June 16, 2023
Events held this week:
- Ilkley Trophy (Challenger 125, grass)
- Emilia-Romagna Tennis Cup (Montechiarugolo, Challenger 125, clay)
- Enea Poznan Open (Challenger 100, clay)
- Internationaux de Tennis de Blois (Challenger 75, clay)
- Directv Open Cali (Challenger 75, clay)
Top 100 players in action:
- Nuno Borges, Alex Molcan, Sebastian Ofner, Jason Kubler (Ilkley)
- Albert Ramos-Vinolas, Thiago Monteiro, Alexander Muller (Montechiarugolo)
- Alexander Shevchenko, Federico Coria (Poznan)
- Quentin Halys (Blois)
First-round matches to watch:
Ilkley
- Gabriel Diallo vs (SE) Arthur Cazaux
- (5) Jurij Rodionov vs Zizou Bergs
Cazaux beat Diallo in the quarterfinals at Nottingham last week. Rodionov and Bergs met in Ilkley round one in 2022 with the Belgian coming back from 5-7 3-5 down and then taking the title.
Montechiarugolo
- (1) Albert Ramos-Vinolas vs (ALT) Fernando Verdasco
- Andrea Pellegrino vs (2) Thiago Monteiro
Poznan
- Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard vs Jakub Mensik
- Daniel Michalski vs Mate Valkusz
Blois
- (1) Quentin Halys vs Terence Atmane
- (3) Timofey Skatov vs (WC) Arthur Gea
Cali
- Eduardo Ribeiro vs (6) Federico Delbonis
- (7) Joao Lucas Reis da Silva vs Gerald Melzer
Main photo credit: Susan Mullane-USA TODAY Sports
