{"id":44286,"date":"2021-12-18T08:30:06","date_gmt":"2021-12-18T13:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=44286"},"modified":"2021-12-17T15:23:16","modified_gmt":"2021-12-17T20:23:16","slug":"botic-van-de-zandschulp-2021-season-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2021\/12\/18\/botic-van-de-zandschulp-2021-season-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Botic van de Zandschulp: 2021 Season Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mary Poppins met her match this year&#8211;Botic van de Zandschulp graced tennis&#8217;s headlines over and over again.<\/p>\n<p>No, not for his tongue-twisting name.<\/p>\n<p>The Dutch #1 is a 26-year-old journeyman who held a career-high ranking of only #150 at the start of the year. After years of grinding it out on the Challenger and Futures tours, van de Zandschulp&#8217;s hard work has paid dividends; he&#8217;s now enjoying a new peak of #57 in the world.<\/p>\n<p>Though he may not have the biggest weapons on tour, prepare to be amazed by the accolades this <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/category\/atp-challenger-tour\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Challenger Tour<\/a>-bannerman has to his name in 2021.<\/p>\n<h2>Qualifying King<\/h2>\n<p>Forget the Calendar Slam, the Dutchman achieved the Qualifying Slam this year, coming through qualifying in all four of the Grand Slams in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>For those under the impression qualifying isn&#8217;t particularly competitive, just take a look at some of the players the Dutchman had to defeat.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Australian Open: Lorenzo Musetti and Mathias Bourgue (pushed Andy Murray to five sets at the 2016 French Open).<\/li>\n<li>French Open: Leonardo Mayer (former world #21) and Illya Marchenko (defeated Andy Murray in the Biella Challenger final).<\/li>\n<li>Wimbledon:\u00a0<em>Technically<\/em>, van de Zandschulp came through qualifying as a lucky loser, losing to Marco Trungelliti in the third round of qualifying. He had defeated Paolo Lorenzi in the first round, however (former world #33, tricky veteran of the game).<\/li>\n<li>US Open: Lost the opening set to all three of his qualifying opponents but won each of those matches.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Speaking of the US Open&#8230;<\/p>\n<h2>US Open Run<\/h2>\n<p>A year of impressive results and consistency culminated in an electric run to the US Open quarterfinals.<\/p>\n<p>The Dutchman beat two Top 20 players to get there.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In the second round, Casper Ruud, the eighth seed, proved no match for his opponent ranked over 100 spots lower than him. With Ruud&#8217;s hard-court serve very much still a work in progress, van de Zandschulp&#8217;s game proved the steadier of the two, only being broken twice during the match.<\/li>\n<li>In the fourth round, Diego Schwartzman started slowly against the inspired Dutchman, losing the first two sets fairly easily. Schwartzman dug deep though, winning two very close third and fourth sets&#8211;van de Zandschulp proved the bookies wrong in the decider, however, and closed the match emphatically, 6-1 in the fifth set.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a id=\"pyD3RCDlS4prXC-bHWJyTw\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1349239543\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'pyD3RCDlS4prXC-bHWJyTw',sig:'v4VPFMbLlJUEhCF3b-ESIJggWV72stSPrw3QIZFNjE4=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1349239543',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<p>He used his serve and steady game to break down opponents that weren&#8217;t used to being unravelled. He dug deep over and over again &#8211; in each of the six matches he played before playing Schwartzman, he had dropped the opening set but won the match.<\/p>\n<p>Though he lost to Medvedev in the quarterfinals, he was the only player to take a set off of the Russian throughout the tournament.<\/p>\n<p>The Dutchman made 46% of his total career earnings in this seven-match streak.<\/p>\n<h2>Other Highlights<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>St. Petersburg semifinal: Defeated Sebastian Korda and Andrey Rublev (the latter the highest-ranked win of his career) to make his first ATP semifinal, losing to the eventual champion, Marin Cilic.<\/li>\n<li>Great Ocean Road Open quarterfinal: Defeated Reilly Opelka to make the quarterfinals at his debut ATP-Tour-level tournament, losing to Karen Khachanov after holding two match points.<\/li>\n<li>French Open comeback: Came back from two sets to love down in his first round victory over Hurbert Hurkacz at Roland Garros.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2021\/09\/07\/botic-van-de-zandschulp-next-aslan-karatsev\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Botic van de Zandschulp<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>For all those struggling in the throes of the Challenger Tour, look no further than Botic Van De Zandschulp for inspiration.<\/p>\n<p>No doubt the man has plenty of talent but for someone without an <em>exceptional<\/em> shot in his arsenal, van de Zandschulp has done <em>exceptionally\u00a0<\/em>well.<\/p>\n<p>Realistically, it&#8217;s difficult to see him cementing himself within the Top 50. His spot in the Top 100 is surely deserved, however &#8211; he should be a fixture in the main draws of majors for years to come.<\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo from Getty.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mary Poppins met her match this year&#8211;Botic van de Zandschulp graced tennis&#8217;s headlines over and over again. No, not for his tongue-twisting name. The Dutch #1 is a 26-year-old journeyman who held a career-high ranking of only #150 at the start of the year. After years of grinding it out on the Challenger and Futures [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3704,"featured_media":32374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[11375,17075,17074,9553,17073,17076],"class_list":["post-44286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atp","category-featured","tag-2021-atp","tag-2021-season-review","tag-atp-player-review","tag-botic-van-de-zandschulp","tag-botic-van-de-zandschulp-review","tag-royal-dutch-lawn-tennis-association"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3704"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}