The 2024 ATP Challenger Tour began with four events in the opening week. It was a brilliant time for plenty of youngsters, with titles for Arthur Cazaux and Maks Kasnikowski and a final for Jakub Mensik. Meanwhile, Valentin Vacherot continued his Nonthaburi Challenger expertise, and Dominik Koepfer won Canberra as the top seed. Read back on last week’s action:
Canberra
Dominik Koepfer was the top seed in the stacked draw in Canberra, kicking off his season with a win over Zachary Svajda. The German, who posted an excellent 33-10 Challenger Tour win-rate in 2023 (including five finals), only dropped one set on the way to another final. Gabriel Diallo seemed to have him on the ropes briefly a set and a break up, but Koepfer managed to fight back. In a high-profile quarterfinal, he also eliminated the former world No. 7 David Goffin.
Jakub Mensik had a slower finish to his 2023 campaign, but everyone’s excited about what the 18-year-old might achieve this year. His path to the semifinals in Canberra was actually quite favorable, with Denis Yevseyev, Benjamin Hassan, and then a walkover from Alexander Ritschard in the quarterfinals. But there was nothing easy about his semifinal 7-5 7-5 win over Brandon Nakashima, which allowed him to secure his 2nd ATP Challenger Tour final (the previous one also coming against Koepfer).
Mensik had an early 40-0 opportunity to go up a break, and things seemed to be going rather smoothly for him from the get-go, but that only lasted a few minutes. His opponent found a way to withstand his power and also hit back with plenty of aggressive shots himself, ultimately rendering the youngster a little confused and struggling to understand what to do.
Koepfer claimed his fifth Challenger title 6-3 6-2 and jumped up to world No. 61 in the ATP Rankings. He had to withdraw from Auckland qualies due to his Canberra run and will be taking a week off before the Australian Open, while Mensik heads to Melbourne to try to fight for his main draw spot.
Noumea
Arthur Cazaux was one of the strongest performers in the January Challengers in Nonthaburi last year, this time taking a different route with a higher ranking and the reciprocal Australian Open wildcard. With 16/32 players in the main draw coming from France, the 21-year-old only faced one foreigner on the way to the final, which actually proved to be his toughest test. Patrick Kypson was up 6-3 4-2, but Cazaux recovered and went on to defeat his friend Harold Mayot in the semifinals, a rematch of their 2020 Australian Open boys’ singles final.
Enzo Couacaud found himself in a slightly less French-heavy part of the draw, but one of his key wins came against Hugo Gaston in the quarterfinals. He was then able to stop the only non-French semifinalist in Gijs Brouwer, also coming back from a set down. This was Couacaud’s first event since September, as he was out injured for the rest of the season. In 2023, a very strong start to the year saw him be the only player to take a set off eventual champion Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open.
The final ended up lasting just 53 minutes, with Cazaux getting out of the blocks early and Coaucaud finding himself completely unable to match that intensity. The all-out aggression from the 21-year-old stood very strong as his opponent seemed fatigued after the tough workout vs Brouwer in the semifinals. Cazaux claimed his 3rd Challenger Tour title (1st outside Nonthaburi) 6-3 6-2 and can take the next week off due to his Australian Open main draw wildcard. Couacaud will have to compete in the qualifying.
Nonthaburi
Has the everlasting saga of Lucas Pouille recovering from his injuries finally ended? It’s way too early to tell, but the 29-year-old sure started the season on an extremely high note after being able to play just 26 matches in 2023. Starting from the qualifying draw in Nonthaburi, he never dropped more than four games in a set on the way to the final. In fact, he lost just 27 games across 12 sets and never got in trouble, locking up his first final since Cassis 2021.
Valentin Vacherot was the champion in Nonthaburi back in 2022. He started from qualifying back then and was hoping for a repeat, making sure that was going to be possible with a very confident couple of wins. The Monegasque player did not slow down after that at all and only had one extremely tough battle against Francesco Passaro, saving three match points at 4-6 4-5 down before finally clinching the win in little less than three hours.
Unfortunately, it’s always the same story with Pouille. He fires up for a few matches and then the body just doesn’t hold up. Down 2-3 in the opening set, he showed signs of back pain when he decided not to track down a lob. A mid-game medical time-out didn’t help and he retired just one point later, unable to serve properly anymore. Vacherot claimed his 2nd Challenger tour title, both in Nonthaburi, with a 3-2 retirement win. He’ll stay at the same venue next week, while Pouille had to withdraw from the qualifying and will now have to nurse himself back to health.
Oeiras
Ever since the pandemic, Gastao Elias became a full-on home soil specialist, making five of his last six Challenger Tour finals in Oeiras (including this one already). It’s also not exactly the strongest moment of his career, so this run came as a bit of a surprise, given his usual surface preferences. With two sets lost on the way to Jaime Faria and Egor Gerasimov, Elias made his second Challenger final on hard courts, but first at an indoor venue.
Maks Kasnikowski made his maiden Challenger final in Ortisei near the end of the 2023 season, wasting two match points against Lukas Klein in the final. The Pole has done most of his best work at this level indoors, enjoying the additional pop and playing more aggressively than in other conditions. In the opening round, he saved six match points in a wild second-set tie-break against Adrian Andreev, before turning it into a big run and beating one of his tennis idols in Joao Sousa.
Elias was finding some inspired forehands with the crowd support, but Kasnikowski began by having the upper hand with more reliable depth and weight of shot. The flashy Portuguese wasn’t willing to give up and it was mostly that resilience that led to the first excellent final of the 2024 ATP Challenger Tour season. Kasnikowski won his maiden Challenger title 7-6 4-6 6-3 and reached a new career-high of World No. 279. Both finalists took a special exempt for the next event in Oeiras.
Events held this week:
- Bangkok Open 2 (Nonthaburi, Challenger 75, hard)
- Oeiras Indoor 2 (Challenger 75, indoor hard)
- Challenger AAT de TCA 1 (Buenos Aires, Challenger 50, clay)
With the Australian Open qualifying and two ATP 250 events taking place, there will be no top 100 players in action.
First-round matches to watch:
Nonthaburi
- (1) Dennis Novak vs Daniel Michalski
- (5) Coleman Wong vs Chun-Hsin Tseng
Oeiras
- (PR) Nicolas Alvarez Varona vs Oscar Otte
- Valentin Royer vs (2) Henrique Rocha
Buenos Aires
- (4) Tristan Boyer vs (ALT) Juan Bautista Torres
- Joao Lucas Reis da Silva vs (2) Edoardo Lavagno
Main Photo Credit: Susan Mullane – USA TODAY Sports
