By The Numbers: 2023 ATP Challenger Tour

The longest ATP Challenger Tour final in history? The first unranked Challenger champion? France’s record-breaking 27 titles? All of these occured during the 2023 ATP Challenger Tour season, in which 46 different countries hosted a tournament while witnessing the rapid rise of young stars and the resurgence of Tour veterans.

ATPTour.com reviews key facts and figures to remember from the 2023 ATP Challenger Tour season.

Comesana Collects Most Match Wins
Argentine Francisco Comesana tallied a 45-21 Challenger-match record in 2023, edging countryman Facundo Diaz Acosta by one match for the most wins this season. Comesana, 23, was crowned champion in Vicenza and Liberec. On two separate occasions, Comesana went on hot streaks in which he won 12 of 13 matches across three tournaments.

The 22-year-old Diaz Acosta was not far behind with a 44-16 match record. The Buenos Aires native captured four titles (Savannah, Oeiras, Milan, Montevideo) and hit a career-high No. 93 in August after making his Top 100 debut the previous month.

Navone Nails Five Titles
Argentine Mariano Navone was unstoppable during the second half of the year. From 19 June to 12 November, the 22-year-old competed in six Challenger finals, triumphing in five of them: Poznan, Santa Fe, Santa Cruz, Buenos Aires and Santa Fe-2.

“In May of last year I was losing in the first round of an M15 and today I have won five Challengers,” Navone said in October. “At that moment it was difficult but to that kid I would tell him to be calm, that good things are going to come.”

Diaz Acosta, Aleksandar Kovacevic, Thiago Seyboth Wild and Alejandro Tabilo all tied for second with four Challenger trophies in 2023.

Teen Titans
At 17 years, eight months, Czech Jakub Mensik won on home soil in Prague to become the youngest Challenger champion of 2023. Mensik was one of 12 teenagers to claim a Challenger title this season. Only three teens earned more than one Challenger title in 2023: Luca Van Assche, Alex Michelsen and Hamad Medjedovic.

Biggest Movers To Top 100
American Alex Michelsen, who earned two ATP Challenger Tour titles this season, led the way as one of the five biggest movers to the Top 100.

Title Leaders By Country
Players from 33 countries won titles this year. Frenchmen earned a record-setting 27 trophies, marking the most titles by a country in a single season, surpassing Argentina’s 23 from last year.

In October, Abdullah Shelbayh became the first player from Jordan to win an ATP Challenger Tour title when he won the LTP Challenger in Charleston, South Carolina.

ATP Tour & Challenger Tour champions
Roberto Carballes Baena, Arthur Fils and Ugo Humbert secured dream runs on both the ATP Tour and Challenger Tour this season. The Spaniard Carballes Baena, who won the ATP 250 event in Marrakech, defended his Seville Challenger title in September.

France’s 19-year-old Fils started the season in the best way possible, winning the opening week Oeiras Indoor 2. His breakthrough year continued as he became the youngest ATP Tour champion this season when he triumphed in Lyon. Fils finished the season at World No. 36.

Despite Humbert’s brief exit from the Top 100 in January, the Frenchman embarked on a memorable season in which he claimed two consecutive ATP Challenger Tour 175 titles: Cagliari and Bordeaux. The 25-year-old closed the season by winning the ATP 250 event in Lyon, finishing at a career-high No. 20.

ATP Challenger 175 Events
In March, the ATP Challenger Tour began 175 category tournaments, which are held during select ATP Masters 1000 tournaments. Nuno Borges won the premiere event at the Arizona Tennis Classic in Phoenix. Andy Murray earned his first title at any level since 2019 when he won the Aix-en-Provence Challenger. Humbert won in Cagliari and Bordeaux while German Dominik Koepfer returned to the winners’ circle in Turin.

Fast Facts

• Luca Van Assche and Ugo Humbert battled for three hours and 56 minutes in the Pau final, setting the record for longest Challenger title match.
• Roman Safiullin became the first player to win a Challenger title and reach the Wimbledon quarter-finals in the same season since Nick Kyrgios in 2014.
• A single-season record 16 different players that competed in college tennis accounted for 24 Challenger titles this year, led by four-time winner Aleksandar Kovacevic (Illinois) and three-time champion Nuno Borges (Mississippi State).
• Next Gen ATP Finals champion Hamad Medjedovic joined Novak Djokovic and Janko Tipsarevic as the only Serbian players with three or more Challenger titles as teenagers. Medjedovic finished his 2023 campaign with a perfect 3-0 record in Challenger finals.
• Kei Nishikori won in Palmas del Mar, Puerto Rico to become the first unranked champion in Challenger history. Nishikori’s victory came in his first tournament after a 20-month injury hiatus.
• A record nine titles were won with the champion saving match point(s) in the final, led by Terence Atmane in Guangzhou, where he saved three championship points.
• At 31 years and three months, France’s Arthur Weber became the oldest player to win a title in his Challenger debut (Zhuhai).
• Andy Murray set the record for longest gap between Challenger titles. The Scot triumphed in Aix-en-Provence 17 years and eight months after his title in Binghamton in 2005.
• Luca Van Assche, Arthur Fils and Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard became the first French teen trio to claim Challenger titles in a single season since 2005 (Monfils, Gasquet, Tsonga).
• Dino Prizmic, 18, won his maiden ATP Challenger Tour in Banja Luka to become the youngest Croatian champion since Borna Coric in 2014.
• The-then 18-year-old Alex Michelsen won the Chicago Challenger to become the youngest American winner since Stefan Kozlov in 2016.
• Jakub Mensik became the youngest Czech champion in history (17 years, 8 months) when he took the title in Prague in May.
• Evan King and Reese Stalder claimed the most team titles in 2023, lifting seven trophies together, marking the most for an all-American duo in a single season. 
• The Challenger Cherbourg La Manche became the first indoor tournament to celebrate 30 years on the ATP Challenger Tour. Cherbourg is joined by Prostejov, Czech Republic (30), Cordenons, Italy (20) and Ostrava, Czech Republic (20) in celebrating significant milestone anniversaries in 2023.
• A total of 46 different countries hosted Challenger tournaments in 2023.