Mariano Navone has now won four Challenger Tour titles since the middle of June, while Zachardy Svajda clinched the trophy in 3 of his last 4 appearances at this level. Aleksandar Kovacevic and Gabriel Diallo did well to remind everyone what sort of potential they have. Ugo Blanchet was the maiden Challenger champion in Malaga. Read back on last week’s action:
Bratislava
Gabriel Diallo‘s season so far wasn’t exactly living up to the expectations, but the Canadian produced a couple of phenomenal wins at the Davis Cup and found this run to get back on track. In the second round, he eliminated the former World No. 3 Dominic Thiem in a deciding set tie-break. He followed it up by taking out Lukas Klein (who always performs well at this event) in another dramatic clash. By beating Martin Damm, he secured his first Challenger final of 2023.
It’s been a pretty phenomenal season for Joris De Loore, who used to have just one Challenger runner-up appearance before this year. He’s already picked up four in 2023, including the most recent one in Bratislava. The Belgian managed to upset the home crowd favorite Alex Molcan in the opening round, despite falling down a break in each of the last two sets. He was again in trouble against Illya Marchenko (who resides in Bratislava), briefly down a break in the decider there as well.
De Loore wasn’t at his best in the final, getting treatment on his foot. His fighting effort was excellent in the second set though and he was quite unlucky to run into a stellar showing from Diallo. The Canadian was hitting with controlled aggression and rally tolerance, but also cracking forehand winners for fun. Diallo won his 2nd Challenger title 6-0 7-5 and gained the 125 points to cover for his strong finish to 2022. He’ll now rest up before appearing in Brest, while De Loore had to pull out of the qualifying for the ATP 250 in Antwerp, but grabbed a special exempt for Olbia instead.
Malaga
Ugo Blanchet is making his first deep Challenger runs with the quarterfinal in Blois and the semifinal in Liberec. One step at a time, he also managed to get himself to his maiden final at this level in Malaga. In six matches needed to get there, he didn’t even drop a set and only needed one tie-break against Maxime Janvier. The run included two of the best wins of his career over players just outside the top 100 who claimed Challenger titles the week before – Constant Lestienne and Flavio Cobolli.
Mattia Bellucci won back-to-back titles in Saint-Tropez and Vilnius this time last year, so he was in danger of suffering a pretty huge ranking drop if he went out in the opening round of this event and his next appearance. However, he made sure to mitigate the damage. He started out by beating the experienced Spaniards Roberto Carballes Baena and Pablo Carreno Busta, before also taking out Andrea Vavassori and Emilio Nava.
While definitely a bit of a more basic hitter than Bellucci, Blanchet was very clean in his aggressive ball-striking, just like he had been the whole week. The Italian tried to use his variety and outmaneuver him, but would sometimes get lost in that despite a few spectacular shots. He also grew increasingly frustrated. Blanchet claimed his maiden Challenger title 6-4 6-4 and will improve his career-high ranking by 73 spots. Both finalists will be competing in Olbia next week, the champion with a special exempt.
Buenos Aires
Federico Coria was the top seed in Buenos Aires, having suffered a surprising exit to Orlando Luz in Campinas the week before. It was close to another shock loss as Juan Pablo Ficovich had a 3-1 lead in the third set against him in the opening round, but the Argentinian survived and found his usual rhythm. In the quarterfinals, he had to outlast Jan Choinski in a grueling physical battle that ended up going over the three-hour mark.
Mariano Navone won two Challenger Tour titles in June/July, separated by one loss in between. The Argentinian was trying to execute the same pattern in Buenos Aires, having clinched the trophy in Santa Cruz and followed it up with a first-round loss in Antofagasta. Lucky loser Gastao Elias came pretty close to stopping him, but couldn’t drive his break in the decider lead home. Luciano Darderi also made Navone hard for the win, but the 22-year-old delivered.
Coria was outplaying Navone in the opening set and seemed to be on his way to exact revenge for the Poznan loss to his compatriot earlier this year. The younger of the Argentinians had to be brave in his shotmaking and hope that something will work out. It did as he played cleaner on the offense and also turned a few points around, eventually outlasting one of the players who have been inspiring him in the last few years. Navone claimed his 4th Challenger title 2-6 6-3 6-4 and joins Thiago Seyboth Wild with most trophies earned on this circuit in 2023. Both finalists are expected at Santa Fe this week.
Shenzhen
Not counting Davis Cup, Nuno Borges had picked up just one win in his last nine events before Shenzhen. That was especially in contrast to his first three months of the season when he won high-quality Challengers in Monterrey and Phoenix. He was only broken once on the way to the final here (by Bu Yunchaokete). Steven Diez and Egor Gerasimov couldn’t even generate a break point against him, only Yu-Hsiou Hsu managed to get to a tie-break.
Earlier this year, Aleksandar Kovacevic was in a situation where if the result of just one match on the other side of the planet went his way, he would have broken the top 100. But it didn’t and the American fell into what was basically a six-month-long slump (quarterfinals at ATP 250 Los Cabos being the exception). Like Borges, the 25-year-old had a very dominant week in Shenzhen with just one tie-break needed to get to the final (against Pedro Cachin) and two of the four opponents unable to break his serve.
Borges got the early break and was really ramping up the pace in the final, but Kovacevic’s backhand defense was solid on the day and he was also mixing up between topspin and slice very intelligently. Out of the corners he was also countering with explosive footwork, making the Portuguese work hard for the points. Kovacevic claimed his 3rd Challenger title (all this year) 7-6 7-6 and gets to about 65 points away from the top 100 again. He grabbed a special exempt spot for the second event in Shenzhen, while Borges has to travel to Antwerp for the ATP 250.
Fairfield
Nishesh Basavareddy is the only player so far who’s eligible for both the junior and college accelerator programme as he was in the top 20 of both rankings. Even his first few Challenger appearances showed a lot of promise, but these past two weeks are when he truly found something amazing. The 18-year-old qualified for the main draw in Tiburon, only losing to the eventual champion in the quarterfinals. In Fairfield he went two steps further, beating Steve Johnson for the second time this year to make his maiden Challenger final.
Zachary Svajda was that aforementioned eventual champion of Tiburon and he was also able to keep his run going in Fairfield. The opening round saw him battle Stefan Dostanic though and after wasting match points in the second set, it all ended up in the deciding tie-break. At one point it seemed like fatigue might get to Svajda with a bagel set he dropped to Skander Mansouri, but soon enough he recovered and reached his third final in the last four Challengers he played.
And just like in Tiburon, Svajda had a very clear edge in the final. His shotmaking was still spectacular and forehand on the run counters he was producing all week just knocked his opponents off their feet. Basavareddy held on until missing a break point at 4-all in the 1st and that’s when he started getting increasingly flat. Svajda claimed his 4th Challenger title 6-4 6-1 and locked up a new career-high of World No. 139. He’s now 16-1 in his last 17 matches. He’ll now rest up for a couple of weeks before Charlottesville, while the runner-up might be playing a bit less due to his college commitments at Stanford.
Challenger Tour magic:
Now that's a wild point! Basavareddy punishing Johnson for going down-the-middle with an insane half-volley pick-up
📷: @ATPChallenger pic.twitter.com/Tu6fpySHik— Damian Kust (@damiankust) October 14, 2023
Sick angle from Navone, but also after everything that happened in this rally, 31st shot!
📷: @ATPChallenger pic.twitter.com/tnTst9o0Zv— Damian Kust (@damiankust) October 14, 2023
Events held this week:
- Olbia Challenger (Challenger 125, hard)
- AAT Challenger Santa Fe 2 (Challenger 75, clay)
- Shenzhen Luohu Challenger (Challenger 75, hard)
- Hamburg Ladies & Gents Cup (Challenger 50, indoor hard)
Top 100 players in action:
- Alexandre Muller, Constant Lestienne (Olbia)
- Federico Coria, Juan Manuel Cerundolo (Santa Fe)
First-round matches to watch:
Olbia
- (1) Alexandre Muller vs Fabio Fognini
- (7) Flavio Cobolli vs Emilio Nava
Santa Fe
- Andrea Pellegrino vs (6) Jan Choinski
- Thiago Monteiro vs (2) Juan Manuel Cerundolo
Shenzhen
- (4) Bu Yunchaokete vs Luke Saville
- (WC) Charles Chen vs (2/WC) Aleksandar Kovacevic
Hamburg
- (1) Dennis Novak vs (WC) Marko Topo
- (8) Oleksii Krutykh vs Illya Marchenko
Main Photo Credit: Geoff Burke – USA TODAY Sports
