Phoenix, Arizona is known to be scorching hot. And next month, the ATP Challenger Tour will bring the heat to the Arizona Tennis Classic, the first event of the newly created Challenger 175 category.

Six Top-50 players are set to play the Phoenix Challenger, which begins March 13. Main-draw action will kick off following the third round of the BNP Paribas Masters in Indian Wells. Several high-ranked players who lose early at the ATP Masters 1000 event are expected to play in Phoenix before continuing onto Miami to complete the ‘Sunshine Double’.

Players who will compete in Phoenix unless they are still alive in the Indian Wells draw, include Botic Van de Zandschulp, Sebastian Baez, Richard Gasquet, Jack Draper, Marc-Andrea Huesler, and Alexander Bublik.

Van de Zandschulp, World No. 34, is the highest-ranked player in the Phoenix field. In 2022, the Dutchman earned a career-best 38 tour-level wins, including victories over Cameron Norrie, Taylor Fritz, and Bublik to help his home country qualify for the Davis Cup Finals knock-out stage. 

Nobody finished 2022 with a better winning percentage on the Challenger Tour this past season than Great Britain’s Draper. The 21-year-old boasted a 24-4 Challenger match-winning record in and collected a season-leading four Challenger titles (tied w/ Pedro Cachin, who will also be in Phoenix): Forli-2, Forli-4, Forli-5, and Saint-Brieuc. The lefty, who has since reached the semi-finals of two ATP 250 events (Eastbourne & Adelaide-2), will return to the Challenger circuit in Arizona.

Jiri Lehecka, who was a quarter-finalist at the 2023 Australian Open, will also compete in Arizona. A three-time Challenger titlist, the Czech was a finalist at the 2022 Next Gen ATP Finals, which showcases the world’s best 21-and-under players.

Chinese star and World No. 61 Wu Yibing, who won the 2023 Dallas Open, will also be in action at the outdoor hard-court event. The 23-year-old won a trio of Challenger titles in 2022 before becoming the first tour-level titlist from China.

Did You Know?
Phoenix Challenger entrants Benjamin Bonzi and Sebastian Baez each claimed six Challenger titles in 2021. Only Tallon Griekspoor has collected more Challenger titles in a single season (eight, 2021).

Full main-draw entry list 👇#ATPChallenger pic.twitter.com/rA9Pktf1qV

— ATP Challenger Tour (@ATPChallenger) February 21, 2023

Two days after he fell to Carlos Alcaraz in the Buenos Aires final, Cameron Norrie found his way back into the win column on Tuesday at the Rio Open presented by Claro. The second seed overcame a strong start from Argentine lucky loser Juan Manuel Cerundolo to run away with a 7-5, 6-1 victory.

From 3-5 down in the opening set, Norrie won 10 of the match’s final 11 games to reach the Rio de Janeiro second round for the second time.

“He was playing well and had some matches here in qualies, so I knew he was going to start well,” Norrie said. “But I was able to find my range and find my legs and really use my backhand pretty effectively towards the end.”

Norrie’s ability to make the match physical and attack the net also keyed his comeback against Cerundolo, according to the Briton. He will next face Brazilian Thiago Monteiro, who beat Dominic Thiem 6-1, 3-6, 7-6(2) on Monday.

Cerundolo’s older brother, fourth seed Francisco Cerundolo, had better luck on Tuesday with a 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 win against Roberto Carballes Baena.

In the evening slate, Carlos Alcaraz led Brazilian tour-level debutant Mateus Alves 6-4, 5-3 before heavy rain ended the day’s play. The 22-year-old Alves thrilled his home fans with a battling performance, breaking twice while saving five of nine break points.

But Alcaraz braved the vocal crowd — and wet, windy conditions — to move to the brink of victory, with play suspended just before Alves stepped up to serve to stay in the match.

Fabio Fognini was also closing in on a win before the rain, the Italian leading Tomas Barrios Vera 6-2, 5-2. Fifth seed Diego Schwartzman and Dusan Lajovic never took the court for their match, nor did Sebastian Baez and Brazilian Thomaz Bellucci, who were set to close the day’s play on Court Guga Kuerten.

Taylor Fritz is not competing this week on the ATP Tour after compiling a 6-1 record over the past two weeks on home soil. Fritz followed a Dallas semi-final run with a title triumph in Delray Beach last week, claiming his fifth tour-level trophy and his fourth in the past 12 months.

While he is not in action on the court, Fritz is winning big this week in the Pepperstone ATP Live Rankings. The American is up two places to No. 5 after Andrey Rublev and Rafael Nadal each dropped 500 points at the start of the week. The best part for Fritz: He is guaranteed to remain at No. 5 for next Monday’s edition of the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, when he will officially join that elite group for the first time and achieve a new career high.

Fritz will become the first American to be ranked inside the Top 5 since Andy Roddick in September 2009.

Fritz spoke of keeping a “Top 10 mentality” after he reached that milestone last October behind his Tokyo title run. Now the 25-year-old has hit even greater heights.

The American’s 2022 Indian Wells triumph in his native Southern California is the biggest factor in his year-long rise, with 1,000 Pepperstone ATP Rankings points added to his tally for his first ATP Masters 1000 title. Fritz’s milestone moment was chronicled in Netflix’s Break Point.

His Tokyo triumph earned him 500 of his 3,660 total points, while four United Cup singles wins added 350 additional points, his efforts helping lead Team United States to the title at the inaugural mixed-gender event.

Fritz is one of 11 Americans in the Top 50 of the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, with World No. 15 and United Cup teammate Frances Tiafoe joining him in the Top 20. It is the first time since May 1995 that the United States has that many men inside the Top 50.

Australian Open semi-finalist Tommy Paul is the No. 3 American at World No. 21, while AO quarter-finalist Sebastian Korda stands at No. 26. All four of the Top 30 Americans are idle this week.

Fritz will next take the court in Acapulco, where he made the last 16 last year. Following that, he will return to Indian Wells as the reigning champion with 1,000 points to defend.

Maxime Cressy walked a tight rope Tuesday in Marseille, but ultimately found a way to win.

The American, who was up a set and a break, defeated French wild card Geoffrey Blancaneaux 6-3, 6-7(5), 7-6(4) after two hours and 50 minutes to reach the second round of the Open 13 Provence.

“Amazing fight. He fought all the way up until the end,” Cressy said. “I had to stay extremely focussed on what I can control and I think I did that very successfully.”

Cressy hit 22 aces and won 83 per cent of his first-serve points. But the critical moment came on return in the final-set tie-break. With Blancaneaux serving at 4/5, Cressy cracked a forehand return to win the point and that proved the decisive advantage he needed.

“In the tie-break I just told myself to, ‘Let go and just win all your serve points and don’t worry about how to return,’” Cressy, who will next play Frenchman Benjamin Bonzi, said. “That’s how I work, unfortunately. I have to just let go and not think and then it works. Very difficult one.”

In other action, Dutch qualifier Gijs Brouwer rallied past Swede Elias Ymer 3-6, 7-5, 6-3 to earn a clash with 2017 Nitto ATP Finals champion Grigor Dimitrov. The 26-year-old is at a career-high No. 116 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings and last week advanced to the quarter-finals in Rotterdam, where he upset Top 10 star Holger Rune in the second round.

Frenchman Gregoire Barrere also moved into the second round in Marseille with a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Swiss lefty Marc-Andrea Hustler. Barrere will face Kazakhstani Alexander Bublik for a place in the quarter-finals.

Emil Ruusuvuori deployed his powerful forehand to great effect on Tuesday at the Qatar ExxonMobil Open in Doha, where the Finn took out sixth seed Daniel Evans 7-5, 6-4 with a clean-hitting display at the hard-court ATP 250.

Ruusuvuori and Evans each broke to love in their opening return games of the first-round clash, setting the tone for an entertaining encounter packed with all-court exchanges. However, the Finn used his forehand to frequently dictate the longer rallies throughout his one-hour, 53-minute victory, which he clinched with the only break of the second set in the 10th game.

“I’m very happy,” said Ruusuvuori post-match. “I really enjoyed being on court, I thought I was improving every game and just playing better and better tennis. He was giving me a tough time, he’s a great player, and I’m just very, very happy to get through this match.”

Ruusuvuori entered the match having won just one of his previous eight matches against Top 30 opponents, but he struck 26 winners, including seven aces, to move past the No. 29-ranked Evans in style and seal a second-round clash with Jiri Lehecka or qualifier Damir Dzumhur.

“He’s a tricky player,” said Ruusuvuori of Evans, who he was playing for the first time. “He plays a little bit different than most of the guys in the Top 50 or Top 100. He has a great slice and great tactics. I just needed to figure out the way and serve well, and put the pressure on him, and in the end, I was able to.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Dutchmen Botic van de Zandschulp and Tallon Griekspoor also advanced to the second round.

The eighth-seeded Van de Zandschulp converted five of nine break points en route to a 6-2, 7-5 win against Ilya Ivashka. The 27-year-old is now 4-0 in opening rounds in 2023 and will look to reach his second tour-level quarter-final of the season in his next match against 2021 Doha champion Nikoloz Basilashvili or qualifier Alexandre Muller.

The World No. 40 Griekspoor, who reached the semi-finals on home soil at the ATP 500 event in Rotterdam last week, held off Quentin Halys for a 7-6(4), 4-6, 7-6(5) victory. Griekspoor crashed 51 winners in his two-hour, 17-minute triumph, which earned him a second-round meeting with top seed Andrey Rublev.

Rafael Nadal, Carlos Alcaraz, Iga Swiatek and Elena Rybakina have been nominated in the 2023 Laureus World Sports Awards.

The Laureus Awards are a highly-regarded ceremony held on behalf of the Laureus Sport for Good foundation. Every spring, they honour the world’s best athletes for their achievements in the previous calendar year via awards in eight categories.

Nadal enjoyed a historic 2022, winning the Australian Open and Roland Garros to move to a then-record 22 Grand Slam titles. The 36-year-old also clinched trophies at an ATP 250 in Melbourne and an ATP 500 in Acapulco, ending the year as the World No. 2. The Spaniard has been nominated for the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year Award.

WTA World No. 1 Swiatek lifted eight titles in 2022, including major crowns at Roland Garros and the US Open. The 21-year-old is one of six nominees in the Laureus World Sportswoman of the Year category, having also won trophies at WTA 1000 events in Indian Wells, Miami and Rome.

Spaniard Alcaraz and WTA star Rybakina have been nominated for the Breakthrough of the Year Award. The 19-year-old Alcaraz won two ATP Masters 1000 crowns and captured his first major title at the US Open. He also became the youngest World No. 1 in the history of the Pepperstone ATP Rankings (since 1973). The 23-year-old WTA star Rybakina won her first Grand Slam at Wimbledon.

Winners will be decided by 71 members of the Laureus World Sports Academy. The categories include Sportswoman of the Year, Sportsman of the Year, Team of the Year, Breakthrough of the Year, Comeback of the Year, Action Sportsperson of the Year and Sportsperson of the Year with a Disability. Nominations in these categories come from the 1400 members of our Global Media Panel.

With Rio de Janeiro hosting an ATP 500 this week, some of the sport’s biggest stars have transcended on the Brazilian city. Carlos Alcaraz, Lorenzo Musetti and Dominic Thiem are all competing and they wasted little time taking in the sounds and the sights of Rio.

Top seed Alcaraz enjoyed a helicopter tour, snapping photos of Christ the Redeemer, an iconic statue that is a symbol of Christianity around the world. The Spaniard, who will begin his title defence at the Rio Open presented by Claro against Brazilian Mateus Alves on Tuesday, then went to Sugar Loaf where he took the cable car.

“The moment in the helicopter was spectacular,” said Alcaraz, who triumphed in Buenos Aires last week. “It was the first time that I had flown in a helicopter. I was a little bit scared at the beginning, but it passed really fast. To live everything from the top is incredible.

“To see the Redeemer from the helicopter was marvellous. In the past, I said it would be great to see that from the sky and it exceeded my expectations.”

The 2017 champion Dominic Thiem attended the Rio Carnival alongside Rafael Matos and David Vega Hernandez. The trio danced to music and watched those in costume parade through the streets.

“Everybody around the world knows the Rio Carnival. It’s going to be a unique experience, and I’m looking forward to it,” Thiem said when arriving. “The stadium is full already, so let’s see how it is going to be.”

“It’s a unique experience,” Brazilian Matos said. “I used to watch it on TV, and to be able to live this is incredible. We will enjoy today and then we will focus on the tournament.”

Italian Lorenzo Musetti opted for a more relaxed day, spending time on the beach.

Francisco Cerundolo lives five blocks from the Buenos Aires Lawn Tennis Club. If he wanted to, he could walk there every day, and he often does in order to avoid the traffic. The same is true of his parents Alejandro and Maria Luz, whose roof he shares alongside his siblings Juan Manuel Cerundolo and Constanza.

It has always been that way for the Cerundolo family, which lives and breathes tennis. The eldest of the Cerundolo siblings has never known any different. Francisco is now the highest-ranked Argentine in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings at No. 33.

The Cerundolo family simply lives for tennis. For them, life without racquets and balls is unimaginable.

“Our house is a locker room,” Alejandro Cerundolo told ATPTour.com. “We talk about sport, tennis, all day. As parents, we never pushed them to be athletes, or forced them to be good. We brought them up with a sporting foundation and each of them went their own way. Today that makes us very proud.”

The 64-year-old Alejandro is a former pro who nearly cracked the world’s Top 300, and he has been a coach and mentor to many Argentines.

The lady of the house, Maria Luz, plays a fundamental role. She is also a tennis player, a qualified psychologist with post-graduate studies in sports psychology, and she travels around the world with her children whenever she can. Two tennis players and an international hockey star, they each have their own personality, and Mother Cerundolo is charged with keeping their feet on the ground and bringing harmony to their home.

The Cerundolo parents always prevented their children from leaving school to spend more time practising.

“It wasn’t easy, Fran was the most resistant. But now they understand why — they are intelligent kids… Juanma was always the keenest on tennis, on training. And Fran, as well as now being in the Top [35], a few years ago he did a semester in the USA, at the University of South Carolina. Now he’s just a few [credits] short of a degree in Economics and Finance,” Alejandro explained of Francisco, who studies remotely at the University of Palermo, which has an agreement with the ATP Tour.

Francisco said: “I always went to school and trained many hours less than everyone… and that gave me an advantage over my opponents at 14, 15 years old. Nobody had picked me out as someone who could make it and be good.

“I was ‘bad’, but when I finished school at 18, I could start training. I grew taller and always maintained my approach to tennis: I wasn’t going to run and play in the air, that didn’t work for me, I played by hitting it hard and flat. But the most important thing was believing in myself.”

Francisco’s progression was more leisurely than his brother Juan Manuel’s. The younger Cerundolo always excelled from a very young age, winning the Junior Orange Bowl in the Under-12s, and even broke onto the Tour by winning the Cordoba Open at just 19.

“When we were little, I would go all over the club with Juanma, down the corridors, playing tennis all day, especially in the summer, in the pool, drinking milkshakes, but always spending a lot of time on the tennis courts,” Francisco said. “We always followed the same path, each in our own category, but he would win and I would lose, and I was always knocked out of the tournament first.

“As the years have gone by, tennis has changed in my life, and I learned to travel, to play tournaments, and going away and coming home to Argentina always gave me an energy boost.”

Was there any point where he believed he might be living the life he has now? “When you get to the ‘top’ and you’re rubbing elbows with the best, you always remember the things you went through, every stage. Now it’s a dream life, luxuries, fans, huge stadiums, but I’ve always had my feet on the ground and I haven’t changed. Luckily I always believed my moment would arrive and finally it did,” said Francisco, who last year won the Bastad title to join Juan Manuel as the first Argentine brothers to win ATP Tour singles titles.

“When he won the tournament in Cordoba in 2021, and I made the next final in Buenos Aires, both at the same time, it was amazing for both of us… That’s when I think we were convinced we were ready for the Tour,” Francisco said.

According to Francisco, his younger brother taught him to be “more professional”.

“He always wanted to do everything perfectly, ever since he was very small, and I learned a lot, from nutrition to how to train better,” Francisco said. “When I was young I found it difficult, I was pretty lazy and I learned to be disciplined from him. Now I see it in my daily work.

Juan Manuel added: “The best thing about Fran, as a person and a player, is how simple and relaxed he is… As much as he’s No. 33 in the world, he is still the same and he doesn’t have the airs or graces of a star, and that allows him to keep improving. It’s like a mirror for me: I was always more structured and he showed me how to enjoy myself and not stress in certain moments.

“The best moment together was at the ATP Masters 1000 in Miami, I am certain… He made the semi-finals and I got to the third round. At a tournament of that magnitude, it was incredible the matches we both won, and also that we were on the U.S. swing together. And it finished in amazing fashion.”

As if it were written in the stars, Francisco became Argentina’s No. 1 player on 13 February thanks to the fact that his brother Juan Manuel beat Diego Schwartzman in the second round of the Cordoba Open. “We’d spoken about it and I told him I’d help him,” Juan Manuel recalled with a smile. Schwartzman had nothing but praise for the brothers.

“I’m a few years older than them but it’s great that players are still coming through and, above all, that they’re two brothers,” Schwartzman said. “I would be lying if I told you I was glad he overtook me, as much as we have a great relationship. But because I’m competitive, now I’m going to want to overtake him again.

”I can show you thousands of conversations with Juanma. About racquets, strings, game patterns, anything you can think of… and in Cordoba he beat me and that meant Fran overtook me. But that’s tennis, and they are doing things right to get to where they are and to have a really bright future ahead.”

Do the Cerundolos set joint goals?

“It’s what we always dream of, being together on Tour. We hope we can do that at the end of the year, because that would mean me being in the Top 100 and hopefully in the coming years we’ll both continue to climb,” Juan Manuel said.

Francisco said: “I think Juanma is doing great. Last year, he had lots of injuries. He loves sport, tennis, and he couldn’t play, but he did well. I think he was stronger, hitting it well, and since coming back he’s won four Challengers. Hopefully he will be back on Tour again soon.”

The Cerundolo Brothers continue to rise. They have their ups and downs, but they are always pushing one another, and their family are alongside them every step of the way.