When tennis fans talk about Hubert Hurkacz’s delivery, they’re usually discussing the Pole’s booming serve, one of the best on the ATP Tour. But the 26-year-old can also deliver a good punch line.

His comedic timing was on full display in the latest edition of our ‘Travel With A Pro’ series, in which the Pole gives an interview from his Vienna hotel room. Our Q&A got off to a rough start, with Hurkacz pointing out the “Privacy Please” sign on his door: “That wasn’t respect!” he joked.

He later shared the importance of his physiotherapist during his time on the road. A big Formula 1 fan, Hurkacz enjoys watching the weekend races with his physio and was travelling with a book on the history of the sport.

“I actually watch every single race,” he said. “Very rarely I miss one.”

Hurkacz also showed off a hoodie with cartoons printed on it… though he stopped short of calling himself a fashionista. But there’s one accessory he takes great pride in: his slippers, which he kicked in the air and caught with panache.

“I thought that was pretty good!” he said, satisfied with his on-camera feat.

Casper Ruud has been a competitor all his life, having fun playing many sports throughout his childhood in Norway. After being exposed to a variety of athletic options, he made the “natural choice” to pursue tennis as a career, with his father Christian Ruud a former pro himself.

Now that the game of tennis has become his job, the Netflix Break Point star is all business.

“I would say that I’m quite professional about things in my career,” he said in a recent interview with the ATP Tour. “I don’t mess around too much. Any time I step on court, whether it’s a practice or a match, I’m all business. Of course I always have fun with it.”

 

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Ruud’s dedication paid off in a big way in 2022, when he rose to a career-high Pepperstone ATP Ranking of No. 2 by winning three titles and reaching finals at Miami, Roland Garros, the US Open and the Nitto ATP Finals.

With nine tour-level trophies, Ruud has gotten used to the winning feeling on the ATP Tour. He won a career-best 57 tour-level matches in 2021 before a 51-win campaign last year.

“If you win it, when the match is over you sort of lose like 10, 20 kilos off your shoulders,” he said. “You can just be yourself, you can let go of all emotions and feelings and know that the rest of the day, I’m going to be a winner.”

While he is now firmly established among the elite in men’s tennis, Ruud remains grounded, appreciating the opportunities he has earned himself on the game’s biggest stages.

He said: “This is what you’ve dreamed of all your life.”

Anytime there’s an ATP Challenger Tour event in France, the local fans flock to watch world-class tennis. The Cherbourg Challenger, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this week, is a case in point.

The longest-running French Challenger has been a staple of professional tennis for three decades. Year after year, spectators have enjoyed seeing some of the sport’s stars before they became household names.

The Challenger Cherbourg La Manche is also the longest-running indoor Challenger and has featured past champions such as former World No. 4 Sebastien Grosjean [1999 champion] and 2017 Nitto ATP Finals winner Grigor Dimitrov [2011]. In 2003, Rafael Nadal was a finalist (l. Sergio Roitman) just two years prior to winning his first Grand Slam title just three hours east in Paris.

That’s what the Challenger Tour has taken pride in its 45-year history: Providing tournaments for young stars to gain pro experience and develop their skills all while competing for points and prize money.

There are no handouts on Tour. Hard work is required as players travel weekly across the world. Even Novak Djokovic worked his way through the Challenger circuit, including in Cherbourg, where he reached the semi-finals in 2005. Now, the Serbian is a 22-time major champion.

The Challenger Cherbourg La Manche is the seventh-longest-running Challenger tournament. The organisers, Alain and Anthony Thiebot, take great pride in their consistent presence on the Challenger Tour. Alain founded the event and initially directed the tournament until his son Anthony took over in 2020. Alain is still heavily involved in running the tournament to this day.

“More than 30 years ago, the French Tennis Federation called my father because there was the need to create a Challenger Tour event to help in the lead up of the Paris-Bercy Masters 1000 tournament,” Anthony told ATPTour.com. “In just a few months, my father gathered a team and he organised the first edition of the Challenger Cherbourg La Manche. The team was composed of volunteers, friends and family. As everyone enjoyed the experience, we decided to continue year after year.”

When asked about what has kept this tournament running for a trio of decades, Anthony was clear: hard work, relationships, and memories made over the past 30 years.

“I think that the main motivation is for the volunteers working at the event, because we like to stay together and reunite during the lead-up and the event itself,” Thiebot said. “We know it is really hard work in the months prior to the beginning of the tournament, but we experience so many good moments during the tournament that we really want to continue year after year.

“The friendship with the players over the years, for example with Kenny De Schepper, who is in his 15th edition, or Alexandre Sidorenko, who participated for 14 times. My father once said that Alexandre is like a second son to him. I have no siblings but I always dreamed to have a sister or a brother. Eventually with Alexandre we now call each other ‘bro’. It’s a special bond you develop with the players and to see them grow, both on and off the tennis court, is so special.”

Challenger Tour Colleagues Extend Their Congratulations

Vancouver Challenger tournament director Rik De Voest, who won Cherbourg in 2005: “Congratulations to Cherbourg Challenger on their 30th anniversary of providing world-class tennis to their community, an impressive achievement. As a former player of the event, my first ever match experience in Cherbourg was in 2003 and was against a young player by the name of Rafa Nadal! I lost in three sets. I had success in doubles that year, winning the title by saving I believe close to seven match points in the final.

“I returned in 2005, arriving late on Tuesday (due to playing in a final the week before), without too many expectations. I would go on to win the singles title, my first Challenger singles title. You always remember your first title, and this one holds a special place for me, and allowed me to establish myself on the Challenger tour.

“From one tournament director to another, I wanted to wish Anthony Thiebot and his team continued success in their long-standing, established event.”

Former World No. 10 and 2009 Cherbourg champion, Arnaud Clement, who is now tournament director of the Aix-en-Provence Challenger: “I have many very good memories at the historic Cherbourg challenger, where I won my one and only Challenger title. I congratulate the longtime tournament director Alain Thiebot, for these 30 editions and to Anthony Thiebot for taking over as director. I wish a long life to the Cherbourg Challenger!”

Frenchman Alexandre Sidorenko, who reached a career-high 145 and is a longtime friend of the Thiebot family: “I first played here in 2003, when I had a wild card in qualies. The tournament director, Alain, was one of my sponsors. We had a good relationship after that. I also played doubles with his son Anthony. Since that, I came back every year. The tournament helped me get a lot of experience. And our families became great friends over the years. As soon as I retired, I kept helping them with the organisation of the event. We are like a family and I’m always happy to come back here. It’s very special.”

Matija Pecotic is living his Hollywood Moment.

The 33-year-old is the Director of Capital Markets for a real estate investment company who signed in as an alternate for qualifying at the Delray Beach Open. The lefty not only received a spot, but reached his first ATP Tour main draw. On Tuesday evening, he upset former Top 10 star Jack Sock to reach the second round.

Not bad for someone who worked his office job on Monday after qualifying.

But to fully understand Pecotic’s road to this point takes revisiting his roots. The Croatian was born in 1989 and in 1993, his family was still in Belgrade, which was entrenched in war. Matija’s father, orthopedic surgeon Goran, received a call from a friend who had just travelled to Malta. Recruitment was underway for an orthopedic surgeon.

“If he got there within a few days he might have had a shot to get the position. So he flew there by himself and found a base [and] rented a house. It’s not easy,” Pecotic told ATPTour.com. “People say there’s so much pressure playing this match. But if you really think about what he did, he was 40 years old, [had] two kids, hyperinflation [was] going on in the country. All your life’s possessions became worthless and you had to move to a country where you didn’t speak the local language and figure it out.

“Talk about pressure. That’s real pressure.”

The Pecotic Family followed Goran to Malta, an island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. The country is not a tennis hotbed to say the least. In fact, Matija took to European team handball as he grew up and other hobbies he had, including spearfishing.

Pecotic never cracked the Top 1,000 in the ITF Junior Rankings. But he decided to mail DVDs of his game to college coaches in the United States. One of the coaches who replied was Glenn Michibata, then the head coach at Princeton University.

“Instead of throwing it in the trash, he said, ‘This kid is just different. And I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to entertain a conversation with him,’” Pecotic said. “If it were not for Glenn, I wouldn’t have gotten to the U.S.”

Billy Pate, who became the Princeton head coach Pecotic’s senior year, laughed thinking about how the lefty ended up at the Ivy League school.

“I get an email now and you have a guy who’s ranked around 1,000, you usually don’t recruit them necessarily unless they only played one or two ITF events and that’s why. So it wasn’t like he had this high ranking going for him,” Pate said. “He told me he went to a high school in Malta where there was a castle type of school with a moat around it and a goat in the front yard.”

Watch Pecotic Complete His ATP Main Draw Debut Win:

Pecotic became a star at Princeton, where he was a three-time Ivy League Player of the Year and climbed as high as No. 2 in the college tennis rankings. He took particular pride in his performance against fellow Ivy League student-athletes, tallying 22 consecutive wins against them.

“Sometimes it got personal in these Ivy League matches because you were playing for your school, you’d wait for these matches all year long. You kind of know who you’re going to play more or less, so I just had to visualise all these opponents and just visualise taking them down one by one,” Pecotic said. “I would print out their pictures on large A4 paper and post them up on my wall in my dorm. I would just put a big red ‘X’ through each one when I got through with them and I did that 22 times in a row.”

According to Pate, Pecotic developed an intimidation factor by the end of his college career.

“He’s got a little bit of the Nadal-like game and he’s got a little bit of a Nadal-type fierceness, where [he has] the big physical energy moving around,” Pate said. “He has a lot of routines he does and also values the fitness and the gym aspect of it and the grind, so I think he’s got a lot of those elements.”

After finishing school aged 24, Pecotic wasted little time climbing the Pepperstone ATP Rankings. He began his professional career in 2014 and ascended to a career-high World No. 206 in 2015. But before the 2016 Australian Open, he underwent stomach surgery and contracted a serious staph infection that kept him bedridden for eight months.

During that time, he sat for the GMAT Exam and applied to business school. Pecotic then attended Harvard Business School and between his final exams and graduation in May 2019, he won an ITF Futures event in Cancun.

“All of a sudden he was like, ‘I’ve got another degree, but I just won a Futures and I’ve got some points, let me go see what I can do with this again, I’m back,’” Pate recalled.

The lefty returned to the Top 400 by the end of the year, but the Covid-19 pandemic hindered his efforts. Later that year at the Sofia Open he signed in as an alternate for qualifying, much like he did in Delray Beach. He was set to play former Top 10 star Gilles Simon on centre court, but withdrew due to illness just before the match, taking away that chance.

With various travel restrictions in place and other pandemic-related roadblocks, Pecotic began to turn his attention to the business world. Today he is the Director of Capital Markets for Wexford Real Estate Investors, an affiliate of the $4 billion investment firm Wexford Capital.

Despite working normal 9-6 hours, he tries to play tennis as often as he can. He often hits with his boss, who is in his 70s. Last Sunday, Pecotic coincidentally ran into Citi Open Chairman Mark Ein.

“He said, ‘Do you want to hit this week? So we played on Monday and then Wednesday’,” Ein said. “After he won his first [qualifying] match against Stefan [Kozlov] he said, ‘You were the only person I hit with this week.’ And it was on clay!”

If Pecotic did not receive an alternate spot in the Delray Beach qualifying draw, they were going to hit for a third time on Saturday. Instead the Croatian faced Kozlov, then eliminated two-time Australian Open quarter-finalist Tennys Sandgren in the final round of qualifying with the support of former World No. 12 Dominik Hrbaty, a longtime friend of Pecotic’s boss.

What has stood out most during his dream run is Pecotic’s passion for the sport.

“The fact that he asked me if I wanted to play with him shows me how much he loves the sport. He wants every opportunity to play,” Ein said. “So I think that was evidence of how much he loves it that as soon as he saw me he just said he wanted to get a chance to literally get out of work and get a hit. We were scheduling the hit around his meetings.”

Ein later added: “[His story] is so fantastic. This is really a Cinderella story unlike very many.”

After working at the office Monday, Pecotic was getting ready for his match Tuesday evening when a friend and mentor, Gordon Uehling, told him a story about 16-year-old David Filer IV from South Bend, Indiana.

“There’s a famous story about him in the juniors where he won a match where he was down 6-0, 5-0, 40/0 and he clawed back and found a way to win. Unfortunately he was diagnosed with a serious form of brain cancer and he fought it off, just the way he fought when he was down 6-0, 5-0, 40/0,” Pecotic said. “Just a couple weeks ago I think it came back and they delivered some really tough news to him and he doesn’t have a lot of time to live. That just put things into perspective.”

(Learn More About Filer IV In The South Bend Tribune)

^{Photo Credit: Andrew Patron}
So when Pecotic lost the first four games of his match against Sock, he was thinking about Filer IV.

“I thought of this kid, who is fighting and enjoying every day that he has on the planet and what he would give to be out on the court there,” said Pecotic, who rallied against Sock to win in three sets. “I just said, ‘Keep digging, keep your head down, keep your emotions in check and don’t give up.’ If I can dedicate this win to someone, I’d like to dedicate it to him.”

This is Pecotic’s Hollywood moment, one he worked towards his whole life. But the humble 33-year-old, who is in the office Tuesday ahead of his second-round match against Marcos Giron, is using the opportunity to thank all those around him who have helped put him in this position.

“Were it not for my first backer out of Princeton, I wouldn’t have even been able to play professionally. Were it not for these incredible guys in Boston that I met in business school who convinced me that I should dream and give tennis another shot, I wouldn’t be here,” Pecotic said. “I feel so privileged and there are just so many people that should be part of this victory. This is a lot more than just a win for me.”

Jannik Sinner was tested on Wednesday at the ABN AMRO Open, but last week’s Montpellier champion battled on to set a second-round showdown with top seed Stefanos Tsitsipas.

The Italian overcame a second-set hiccup to defeat Benjamin Bonzi 6-2, 3-6, 6-1 after two hours and four minutes in Rotterdam.

“For sure it’s tough when you come quite late to the other tournament, so I’m very happy about my performance today,” Sinner said. “It was not easy for me. We made a lot of unforced errors today. But still I tried to stay focussed [on] my game.”

Sinner saved two of the three break points he faced and won 46 per cent of his return points to improve to 9-2 on the season. He will next try to double his win total against Tsitsipas (1-5).

“I started off very well and I finished quite well, so I’m happy,” Sinner said. “Let’s see what’s going to happen in the next round.”

Also moving on was fourth seed Holger Rune, who ousted qualifier Constant Lestienne 6-4, 6-4. The Danish star broke the Frenchman’s serve four times to reach the second round.

“It was tricky. It’s a lot about finding the rhythm here in the beginning of the tournament and first match you have to really be on your toes, especially I played a qualifier today who already has two matches in his bag,” Rune said. “It made it more difficult, but I’m happy how I handled every situation today.”

Already through to the quarter-finals is former World No. 3 Stan Wawrinka, who defeated another former Top 10 star Richard Gasquet 6-3, 6-3.

The Swiss has long enjoyed success in the Netherlands, having won the tournament in 2015 and advanced to the final in 2019. Wawrinka will play the winner of Sinner and Tsitsipas in the last eight.

Dominic Thiem got off the mark for the 2023 ATP Tour season with a quality win on Tuesday night at the Argentina Open. The former World No. 3 defeated seventh seed Alex Molcan 7-6(4), 6-3 in Buenos Aires, breaking through in his fifth match of the year.

“It was a good match,” said Thiem, who won the Buenos Aires title in 2016 and 2018. “I like it a lot here in Buenos Aires. Already the last days in practice I was feeling well.

“I won my first match of the season against a very good opponent. I stayed focussed throughout the whole match, as well in the difficult moments. So I’m happy and I’m trying to focus fully on the second round now.”

Thiem and Molcan traded breaks from 5-5 in the opening set, with Thiem racing to a 5/1 lead in the tie-break after failing to serve out the set. The 29-year-old Austrian did not face a break point in set two as he improved to 12-1 in Buenos Aires with the victory.

Next up for Thiem is Peruvian qualifier Juan Pablo Varillas, a 6-2, 7-5 winner against Joao Sousa earlier on Tuesday. Third seed Lorenzo Musetti is a potential third-round opponent at the ATP 250.

Matija Pecotic became one of the stories of the young season on the ATP Tour by qualifying for his tour-level debut at the age of 33. But the Croatian, who holds a full-time job in finance, was not content just to make the main draw at the Delray Beach Open.

On Tuesday, Pecotic extended his dream run in Florida with a 4-6, 6-2, 6-2 win against former Top 10 player Jack Sock. After falling behind 0-4 in the opening set and fighting off a break point early in the second, the Princeton and Harvard graduate dominated the second half of the match. He won the final four games of sets two and three, and did not face a break point beyond the third game of the second set. 

“I certainly didn’t expect to win, but certainly didn’t come into the match thinking that I’m definitely going to lose,” said Pecotic, who represented Croatia at the inaugural United Cup last month. “You’ve got to be realistic. This is a former Top 10 guy with an incredible amount of tennis experience, with a huge serve. He came out serving 134 [mph] on the first serve. It would be arrogant to think that I’m going to come out and expect to win.

“But I certainly figured if I could sink my teeth into the match and work on the two or three patterns that I prepared before, that I’m going to have a chance. And then let’s see… if I was going to fall under pressure or not be able to serve it out at some point. But I didn’t and I got the win.”

Pecotic hit 10 aces and 30 winners in the two-hour, 10-minute match, saving six of eight break points. He attacked the net 31 times, winning 21 of those points.

The 33-year-old won just three games in the opening round of a Cleveland ATP Tour Challenger event two weeks ago, but now finds himself in the last 16 at the ATP 250 level. He will next face Marcos Giron, who defeated eighth seed Ben Shelton 6-4, 6-4 to close the evening’s play in Delray Beach. Pecotic has already beaten three Americans this week, beginning with Stefan Kozlov and Tennys Sandgren in qualifying.

“I had to leave work early today,” joked Pecotic, whose boss was in his player box. “I had to send an email to the whole team. [My boss] let me off. I’m going to have to ask for another day off tomorrow.”

Also advancing on Tuesday in Delray Beach were Americans J.J. Wolf and Mackenzie McDonald. The ninth-seeded Wolf defeated Ilya Ivashka 7-5, 6-3, while McDonald downed Taro Daniel 6-2, 6-2. Adrian Mannarino joined them in the last 16 with a 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 win against Daniel Altmaier.

Carlos Alcaraz has missed four months due to injury. In doing so, the Spaniard also lost his place atop the Pepperstone ATP Rankings.

Starting this week in Buenos Aires at the Argentina Open, the 19-year-old sensation is determined to climb back towards the top of men’s tennis’ mountain.

“It has been a long time [I spent] at No. 1,” said Alcaraz, who held top spot for 20 weeks. “Now it’s a goal for me to recover No. 1 and try to do my best in these tournaments to be back on that number. I’m looking for that.”

The teen knows the road to accomplishing that feat will not be an easy one to travel. The current World No. 1 is Novak Djokovic, the 22-time Grand Slam champion and 38-time ATP Masters 1000 titlist, who has been at the top of the sport longer than any other man in history.

Alcaraz looks forward to embracing the challenge of chasing the Serbian, for whom he has great respect.

“He has no weaknesses. Every shot, it’s amazing,” Alcaraz said. “His physical condition is amazing, his mental condition is amazing. He’s like a god and I admire him over the years staying at the same level, staying at the top. It’s really, really difficult and I admire that.”

Djokovic (7,070) holds an 840-point advantage over Alcaraz (6,230) in the Pepperstone ATP Live Rankings. But for now, the Spanish teen is focussed on making his return to action in Argentina.

“I’m feeling great. I’m getting used to these conditions, to play with the best players, so at the moment I’m feeling well,” Alcaraz said. “It’s tough to play my first tournament after a long time for me, after four months. So it’s going to be really, really tough to win the tournament or be close to winning. My hope is to feel that I am okay with the injury, with my body and try to play well.”

Alcaraz will face an immediate test against Serbian Laslo Djere, who defeated Italian Fabio Fognini 6-4, 6-4 in the first round. Djere has excelled on clay, winning an ATP 500 title on the surface four years ago in Rio de Janeiro. It will be the pair’s first ATP Head2Head clash.

More than anything, Alcaraz is thrilled to be back in action.

“I’m really excited to play here in Buenos Aires. I had four months with no competition, with no matches, just training and recovering my injury,” Alcaraz said. “I’m so excited to play again, to be in the competition again. I’m looking forward to doing it.”

A day after Stan Wawrinka edged Alexander Bublik in an entertaining ABN AMRO Open first-round singles clash, the pair combined to cause an upset in the doubles draw at the indoor ATP 500 event.

Bublik and Wawrinka defeated second seeds Nikola Mektic and Mate Pavic 3-6, 7-6(3), 10-7 in Rotterdam. Although the Kazakh-Swiss pair did not carve out a break point in the 78-minute encounter, they took ultimately unassailable early leads in both the second-set tie-break and the Match Tie-break to notch a notable victory against the Croatian stars.

Next up for Bublik and Wawrinka in Rotterdam are Belgian qualifiers Sander Gille and Joran Vliegen. In the same half of the draw, Ivan Dodig and Austin Krajicek also needed a Match Tie-break to see off Fabrice Martin and Andrey Rublev. The Croatian-American pair, which qualified for the 2022 Nitto ATP Finals in their first year as a team, prevailed 3-6, 6-4, 10-4 to reach the quarter-finals.

Also on Tuesday, Rohan Bopanna and Matthew Ebden downed Australian Open finalists Hugo Nys and Jan Zielinski 7-6(6), 4-6, 10-5, while Grigor Dimitrov and four-time Rotterdam doubles winner Nicolas Mahut beat Andreas Mies and John Peers 6-3, 6-3.

Bolleli/Fognini Breeze Through In Buenos Aires
At the Argentina Open, Simone Bolleli and Fabio Fognini delivered a dominant display to defeat Sadio Doumbia and Fabien Reboul 6-1, 6-3 and avenge their first-round defeat to the French pair at January’s Australian Open.

The third-seeded Bolelli and Fognini, who lifted the Buenos Aires title in 2013, converted five of 12 break points in their 69-minute victory against last week’s Cordoba finalists. The Italian duo will next take on home favourites Sebastian Baez and Facundo Bagnis in the quarter-finals.

The other doubles action at the clay-court ATP 250 in the Argentine capital Tuesday saw Cordoba semi-finalists Andrey Golubev and Aleksandr Nedovyesov defeat Alexander Erler and Lucas Miedler 6-4, 6-4.

Verdugo/Reyes-Varela Pull Away In Delray
Hans Hach Verdugo and Miguel Angel Reyes-Varela edged Diego Hidalgo and Hunter Reese 3-6, 7-5, 10-6 to advance to the quarter-finals at the Delray Beach Open. Despite converting just two of 13 break point opportunities in the one-hour, 43-minute first-round clash, Mexican duo Verdugo and Reyes-Varela maintained their composure and were never behind in the Match Tie-break.

Their next opponents at the hard-court ATP 250 in southern Florida will be third seeds Nathaniel Lammons and Jackson Withrow or Nuno Borges and Andre Goransson.