Andy Lapthorne: British wheelchair tennis player criticises sport for 'ableism'
Leading British wheelchair tennis player Andy Lapthorne tells the BBC that ableism is an issue in his sport.
Leading British wheelchair tennis player Andy Lapthorne tells the BBC that ableism is an issue in his sport.
Continuing our series on the most compelling storylines at Grand Slams in 2020, ATPTour.com looks at the five most dramatic comebacks at the majors this season, beginning today with Part 1. Next week we’ll look at the best matches, comebacks and upsets at ATP Tour tournaments.
Andre Agassi once said that the great thing about tennis is “you can’t run out the clock… as long as we were still playing, I had a chance”. The pandemic changed how the tennis season unfolded, but Agassi’s adage was as true as ever in a year full of epic comebacks, particularly at the majors, where players have five sets worth of canvasses to paint.
The Grand Slam season started with 29 five-set matches at the Australian Open and ended with a French twist—a wonderfully unpredictable Roland Garros that was full of comebacks, upsets and Cinderella stories. Below we outline three of the five best comebacks of the year, with the top two revealed tomorrow.
5. Fabio Fognini d. Reilly Opelka, Australian Open, R1, 21 January 2020
Fabio Fognini matches are often a lot like Federico Fellini films—full of drama, dark comedy, flashes of brilliance, suspense, plenty of dialogue and the occasional hand gestures. Fognini spent much of the first two sets of his first-round match against Reilly Opelka at the Australian Open talking to himself and anyone who would listen, as though he was rehearsing for an audition in a film. The American had beaten him the year before in the first round of the US Open and as he raced to a two-sets to-love lead, pelting 140 mph aces here, there and everywhere, a repeat looked on the cards.
It seemed very much like the Italian was about to say arrivederci Melbourne.
But after the second set, Fognini got exactly the plot twist he needed: biblical rain that held play over until the following day. After a good night of sleep and, presumably, a nice helping of pasta, the Italian was a new man the next day. He finally managed to break Opelka’s seemingly impenetrable serve in the third and fourth sets, and he cracked a forehand return winner on match point in the fifth-set Match Tie-Break to clinch a three hour, 38 minute thriller, 3-6, 6-7(3), 6-4, 6-3, 7-6(10/5).
“I was lucky that the rain came on the right time,” said Fognini after the match. “Yesterday he was playing better than me. I only lost one break, and I was two sets down. These guys (the big servers) they’re always tough to play, but we have to.”
4. Andy Murray d. Yoshihito Nishioka, US Open, R1, 1 September 2020
Andy Murray is a legend in the sport. But coming into the 2020 US Open, his FedEx ATP Ranking was a modest 115 as he continued his comeback from career-saving hip surgery. Sir Andy hadn’t played a major in more than a year and hadn’t notched a win at a major since beating James Duckworth, then ranked No. 448, at the US Open in 2018.
Murray’s expectations entering the event were modest and once he was down two sets and a break in the third set in his first-round match against Yoshihito Nishioka, even he must have been thinking it was curtains for his summer in New York. After all, the Scot hadn’t won a five-set match since beating Jo-Wilfried Tsonga at Wimbledon in 2016. But Murray did what he always does: he didn’t give up.
Murray chipped away, running down every ball, waiting for the Japanese man to cool off, and simply persevering. When he finally prevailed 4-6, 4-6, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (4), 6-4, in four hours, 39 minutes, he was too exhausted to celebrate.
“They have an ice bath in the locker room and they said it was for emergencies,” Murray said. “For me this is an emergency right now. I’ll ask and see if they’ll allow me to use the ice bath. If not I’ll try to get back to the hotel as quickly as I can.”
Murray did indeed get permission to dip himself in the ice bath, but the recuperative benefits were not enough to take him further in the tournament. He suffered a straight-sets loss to Felix Auger-Aliassime in the second round.
3. Andrey Rublev d. Sam Querrey, Roland Garros, R1, 29 September 2020
Andrey Rublev showed up late to the party at Roland Garros this year after winning the Hamburg European Open. And he was also late to the party in each of his first three sets against the hard-serving American veteran Sam Querrey. The 23-year-old Russian came into the event with a head of steam, but had just one day to recover from his title run at the ATP 500 tournament before facing Samurai Sam in the first round in Paris.
He fell behind 3-0 in the first set, rallied, but still lost in a tie-break. The second set was like déjà vu: he trailed 4-0, rallied, but still lost in a tie-break. The third try was a charm for Rublev, who was losing 2-5 in the third set before he reeled off five straight games to capture the set, as Querrey’s dominating serve-forehand combo that produced 80 winners in the match began to falter. After taking the fourth set, Rublev capped a remarkable 6-7(5), 6-7(4), 7-5, 6-4, 6-3 victory by chasing down a drop shot and flicking a forehand winner to clinch the win in three hours and 17 minutes.
After the match, he was asked how he had done it.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I was completely sure that it’s over. I was just so lucky…
I was feeling completely tight. I choke another level. Since the first point of the match till the last point of the match I was completely freeze…Not many times I was tight like this. Anyway, I’m happy that I have this one more present that I’m here, and I’m alive.”
He was indeed alive—he went on to reach the quarter-finals, where he lost a Hamburg final rematch to Stefanos Tsitsipas.
Nominees have been announced in the 2020 ATP Awards for all player-voted categories — Comeback Player of the Year, Most Improved Player of the Year, Newcomer of the Year, Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award — and Coach of the Year.
Diego Schwartzman has received two nods, for Sportsmanship and Most Improved, while his coach, Juan Ignacio Chela, has been nominated by his peers for Coach of the Year. Schwartzman will be up against three-time winner Rafael Nadal, John Millman and Dominic Thiem in the Sportsmanship category, and go against Ugo Humbert, Andrey Rublev and Jannik Sinner for Most Improved.
ATP Awards winners, including Fans’ Favourite and the recipient of the Arthur Ashe Humanitarian Award, will be revealed later this month. Fans can vote for their favourite singles player and doubles team through Friday, 11 December.
View the complete list of 2020 ATP Awards nominees:
Voted By Players
Comeback Player of the Year: The player who has overcome serious injury in re-establishing himself as one of the top players on the ATP Tour.
Kevin Anderson
Andrey Kuznetsov
Vasek Pospisil
Milos Raonic
Most Improved Player of the Year: The player who reached a significantly higher FedEx ATP Ranking by year’s end and who demonstrated an increasingly improved level of performance through the year.
Ugo Humbert
Andrey Rublev
Diego Schwartzman
Jannik Sinner
Newcomer of the Year: The #NextGenATP player who broke into the Top 100 or Top 150 for the first time in 2020 and made the biggest impact on the ATP Tour this season.
Carlos Alcaraz
Sebastian Korda
Lorenzo Musetti
Jurij Rodionov
Emil Ruusuvuori
Thiago Seyboth Wild
Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award: The player who, throughout the year, conducted himself at the highest level of professionalism and integrity, who competed with his fellow players with the utmost spirit of fairness and who promoted the game through his off-court activities.
Rafael Nadal
John Millman
Diego Schwartzman
Dominic Thiem
Voted By Coaches
Coach of the Year: Nominated and voted on by fellow ATP coach members, this award goes to the ATP coach who helped guide his players to a higher level of performance during the year.
Gilles Cervara (Daniil Medvedev)
Juan Ignacio Chela (Diego Schwartzman)
Nicolas Massu (Dominic Thiem)
Riccardo Piatti (Jannik Sinner)
Fernando Vicente (Andrey Rublev)
After practising for the first time since having hip surgery a year ago, Laura Robson says she feared she would never “make it back on court”.
On Monday, ATPTour.com began its Season in Review series by revealing the fifth through third-best Grand Slam matches of 2020. We continue the series by looking at the two best major clashes of the year. Later this week we’ll also look at the biggest comebacks and upsets at the Slams this year before turning our attention next week to the best matches, comebacks and upsets at ATP Tour tournaments.
Video courtesy Tennis Australia
2) Nick Kyrgios d. Karen Khachanov, Australian Open, R3, 25 January 2020 (Read Report)
Nick Kyrgios started the 2020 season with a clean slate, characterising himself as a “new and improved” Nick. Already a fan favourite Down Under, he became a legend by spearheading relief efforts to combat the awful bushfires that devastated Australia in the lead up to the tournament. Even before he entered Melbourne Arena for his clash against Karen Khachanov—then ranked nine spots above him at No. 17 in the FedEx ATP Rankings—the well-lubricated evening crowd was ready for a party, singing Sweet Caroline in unison. Little did they know that they should have been pacing themselves, as they were in a four tie-break, four-hour, 26-minute clash for the ages.
It all started innocently enough, if a Kyrgios match can ever be labelled as such, with Nick taking the first two sets 6-2, 7-6(5). The combustible Aussie, dressed in a fluorescent kit and on his best behaviour, raced out to a 4-2 lead in the third set, and it appeared as though he was off to the races for a highly anticipated fourth-round showdown with Rafael Nadal. But the Russian masher, as it turned out, was just getting warmed up. He broke back at love in the seventh game, then fended off a match point in the third-set tie-break before sending the match to a fourth set.
The Russian saved another match point in the fourth-set tie-break at 6/7, and he sent the match into a fifth set three points later as a Kyrgios backhand sailed just wide. Of course, the match went to yet another tie-break (this time a first-to-10 Match Tie-Break), and Nick converted his third match point, more than two hours after his first.
The crowd had seemingly willed the gutted Kyrgios to victory and when Khachanov’s final backhand sailed wide, they went ballistic as the Canberra native dropped his racquet, fell to the ground and then laid flat on his back for a spell before staggering to his feet to celebrate the win. It may have been a “new and improved” Nick, but in many ways, it was vintage King Kyrgios stuff on the court—under-arm, and fake under-arm serves, drop shots aplenty, and dozens of impossible winners.
“It’s emotional,” Kyrgios said after his 6-2, 7-6(5), 6-7(6), 6-7(7), 7-6(8) win. “That’s definitely one of my best wins of my career, I think…This is just epic man, I don’t even know what’s going on. Honestly my legs feel about 40kg each. I was losing it mentally a little bit… I thought I was going to lose, honestly.”
Video courtesy Tennis Australia
1) Novak Djokovic d. Dominic Thiem, Australian Open, Final,
Credit Dominic Thiem for taking on the toughest jobs in tennis. In 2018 and 2019, he tangled with Rafael Nadal, the toughest hombre in the world on clay, in the final at Roland Garros. And earlier this year, on a clear night under an open roof, he took on Novak Djokovic in the final of the Australian Open. Nole, then a seven-time champion at the event, had never lost a semi-final or final at the Grand Slam of Asia-Pacific.
At the time, Thiem had never beaten Djokovic on a hard court, and, to make matters worse, the Serb had a big extra incentive to win: an eighth title would allow him to overtake Rafael Nadal as the No. 1 player in the FedEx ATP Rankings. Thiem may have been taking on the toughest tests in tennis, but prior to 2019 he wasn’t exactly acing those exams. The Austrian standout was just 7-15 versus the Big Three prior to 2019, and although he led the ATP Tour with 211 wins from 2016-9, before 2019 he was 15-32 against the Top 10.
But in the year leading up to the Aussie Open final, Thiem was starting to turn the tide. In 2019, he won two of his three matches against Djokovic, including a big win in the semi-final at Roland Garros in five sets. He was 3-0 versus Federer that year and he split a pair of meetings with Rafael Nadal. And so, Djokovic came into the match as the favourite, but Thiem was clearly inching closer toward the Serb’s throne.
Thiem knew he wouldn’t beat Djokovic playing it safe, so he came out of the gates going for winners and the game plan seemed to be working as he raced out to a two-sets-to-one lead.
Djokovic would later admit that he started to “feel really bad on the court” after losing the second set due to dehydration. He was frustrated with both his opponent and the chair umpire, who cited him for consecutive time violations in the second set. At 1-1 in the fourth set, Thiem had a break point that could have given him a stranglehold on the match. But Djokovic surprised him with a crisp serve-and-volley combo winner to stave off the threat.
“Probably one point and one shot separated us tonight,” Djokovic said of the point. “(It) could have gone a different way… I kind of regained my energy and strength midway in the fourth set and got back into the match. I was on the brink of losing the match.”
Thiem didn’t have another break point in the fourth set, which he dropped 6-3, and then the Serb took command in the fifth, breaking Thiem in the third game and then closing out a scintillating 6-4, 4-6, 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 win in three hours and 59 minutes.
“I think there’s not much to change,” Thiem said after the match. “In the last two sets, I definitely gave everything I had. Novak is part of three guys who are by far the best players ever who played tennis. If you play a Grand Slam final against him, it’s always going to be a match where very small details are deciding.”
Thiem lost the battle but the confidence he gained in pushing the World No. 1 to the limit in Australia may have helped him later in the season, as he captured his first major in New York and later exacted a small measure of revenge on the Serb, beating him in the semi-finals of the Nitto ATP Finals.
Read More: Best Grand Slam Matches Of 2020 Part 1
ATPTour.com today kicks off our annual season in review series, beginning with Part 1 of our look at the best Grand Slam matches of the year. This week we’ll also look at the biggest upsets and comebacks at the Slams in 2020. Next week, we’ll look at the best matches, comebacks and upsets at ATP Tour events.
In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” Tennis fans and players also went through seasons of darkness and light, hope and despair, all within one challenging and unpredictable roller coaster of a year.
Though in the tennis world, the period of despair occurred in the spring and early summer, when it was unclear if the season could move forward at all. Tennis’ spring of hope came a few months late, as the US Open and Roland Garros moved forward, giving the world a much needed diversion in the form of a full month combined of wonderful tennis.
The year got off to a cracking start Down Under at the Australian Open, where the players raised much-needed funds for bushfire relief efforts and the men played dozens of great matches, including 29 five-setters. The cancellation of Wimbledon was a gut punch, but the fact that US Open and Roland Garros came off smoothly and featured so many excellent matches was beyond great.
It was a year of milestones at the majors—Novak Djokovic took his eighth Australian Open, Dominic Thiem won his first major, and Rafael Nadal won his 13th title at Roland Garros. But there were many other great moments too. Here we recount some of the year’s best matches at the majors, including some you no doubt saw, and others, like a six-hour epic at Roland Garros, you may have missed.
In Part 1 below, we look at the fifth, fourth and third best Slam matches of 2020, followed tomorrow by a look at what we deem to be the best two Slam matches of the season.
5) Lorenzo Giustino d. Corentin Moutet, Roland Garros, R1, 28 September 2020 (Read Report)
Lorenzo Giustino, a 29-year-old from Naples, Italy, has just one tour-level win in his career. But oh what a win it was. Coming into his first-round match against the 21-year-old Frenchman, Corentin Moutet, then ranked No. 71, he had entered the qualies of 16 majors and had lost in the qualifying rounds 16 times. But his luck seemed to be changing. In his previous major, the Australian Open, he made the main draw as a lucky loser, though he lost in the first round.
Still, there was no reason to believe he would beat Moutet, a promising young French talent in Paris, particularly after Moutet bageled him in the first set. But Giustino battled back, winning the second and third sets in tie-breaks, before losing the fourth 6-2. By the start of the fifth set, the match had already been going on for three hours and five minutes, but little did either man know they still had a three-hour fifth set to play (Roland Garros is the only major where players must win by two in the fifth set).
Moutet, nicknamed ‘Colonel Moutet’ by Brad Gilbert, served for the match three times in the fifth, but was broken each time. Not that service breaks were a rarity in the match, mind you. Moutet was broken nine times, Giustino thirteen. Moutet also outscored his opponent by 242 points to 217, and blasted 31 more winners. But none of that mattered, as Giustino came up with gutsy, ingenious clay court tennis to prevail 0-6, 7-6(7), 7-6(3), 2-6, 18-16 in what was, at six hours and five minutes, the second-longest match in Roland Garros history, next to the six-hour, 33-minute contest between Fabrice Santoro and Arnaud Clement in 2004.
The Italian claimed that he felt fine after the match.
“No, no, no, I feel perfect,” he said, after a reporter asked if he’d be too tired to face Diego Schwartzman in the next round. “Tomorrow I’ll go run a bit because I think I’m too fresh.”
Sadly for the tenacious Giustino, now ranked No. 149, he lost to Schwartzman and is still looking for his second tour-level win. But he’ll always have Paris.
4) Borna Coric d. Stefanos Tsitsipas, US Open, R3, 4 September 2020
Borna Coric has a tattoo that says, “There is nothing worse than being ordinary”. Perhaps that ethos kept him from giving up while down two sets to one and 1-5 in the fourth set of his third round match against Stefanos Tsitispas at the US Open this year. Coric, then No. 32 in the FedEx ATP Rankings, knew he’d need to be extraordinary to upset the tournament’s fourth seed and indeed he was just that.
Though they’re both from Mediterranean countries, are close in age and have younger sisters they adore, the men are a study in contrasts: Coric wears his hair cut short and plays from the baseline; Tstsipas has the long curly locks and comes to net. The Croat burst into the Top 15 in 2018, but seemed to lose a step late in 2019 and into 2020. In his last major appearance prior to the Tsitsipas match, he lost in the first round at the Australian Open. And so, he was in need of a career-pivoting win against a player who, though two years younger, had overtaken him in the rankings.
Up two sets to one and 5-1 in the fourth, it seemed certain to be another disappointing tournament for Coric, until he held and broke back to narrow the gap. Tsitsipas’ game was slipping but he still had three match points at 5-4, 40-0. But he squandered each of them, and the then 23-year-old Croat stormed back, winning six consecutive games to take the fourth set 7-5.
Despite the fourth set collapse, Tsitsipas admirably recovered, playing well in the fifth set to send the match to a decisive tie-break. Stefanos hit just one double fault across 29 service games, but then served up two in the final tie-break. The hiccups gave Coric a 6/3 lead, which he cashed in on his second match point, giving him a remarkable 6-7(2), 6-4, 4-6, 7-5, 7-6(4) comeback win in four hours, and 36 riveting minutes that amounted to a Greek tragedy for Tsitsipas.
“I have to be honest and say that I was really lucky,” said Coric, who subsequently beat Jordan Thompson in the next round before falling to Alexander Zverev in the quarter-finals. “I made some unbelievable returns and I was a little bit lucky at the end. In the third and fourth set, he was playing unbelievable tennis and I felt like I had no chance. In the fifth-set tie-break, I knew it was not going to be easy for him, so I tried to just keep the ball in court and make him play as many balls as possible.”
For his part, the Greek kept his sense of humour and perspective after the loss. “This is probably the saddest and funniest thing at the same time that has ever happened in my career,” tweeted Tsitsipas.
The win would indeed be a season changer for Coric, who finished the season at No. 24 in the FedEx ATP Rankings largely on the strength of his quarter-final showing and a subsequent run to the final at the St. Petersburg Open, where he beat Reilly Opelka and Milos Raonic before falling to Andrey Rublev.
3) Roger Federer d. John Millman, Australian Open, R3, 24 January 2020 (Read Report)
John Millman is one of the hardest working, and nicest, players on the ATP Tour. But the 31-year-old Aussie has a career record that includes more losses than wins and he has never cracked the Top 30. Nothing about his career would suggest that he’d be Roger Federer’s kryptonite—even his career record (1-3) against the Swiss legend doesn’t adequately reveal the fits Millman has given Federer in recent years.
Millman, then ranked No. 55, notched a historic upset over Federer at the 2018 US Open in stifling heat, and played him close in two other losses, in Brisbane in 2015 and in Halle in 2019. But when they met again, earlier this year in the second round of the Australian Open, Federer still came into the match as a decisive favourite. Millman even referred to the possibility of him beating Federer again as “lightning striking twice”.
But when the tenacious, uber-fit Millman went up an early break against Federer in the fifth set, it looked as if the maestro from Münchenstein was indeed about to be struck down twice by the Aussie. The raucous crowd didn’t know whom to support—the Aussie underdog or the beloved champ, who oddly became a bit of an underdog in his own right. Federer fought back, levelling the fifth set at 2-2, but in the fifth-set tie-break (first to 10, win by two), Millman steamed out to 3/0 and 8/4 leads.
Video courtesy Tennis Australia
Federer kept his cool though, reeling off six straight points, punctuating a remarkable, 4-6, 7-6(2), 6-4, 4-6 7-6(8) win with a cross-court forehand winner into open space.
“Oh God, it was tough,” Federer said of his 100th Australian Open win after the match. “Thank God it was a Match Tie-break, otherwise I would have lost this one…A bit of luck maybe goes one way… I didn’t play too bad after all and I was getting ready to explain myself in the press conference… What a match and John deserves over half of this one.”
Two matches later, Federer would save seven match points against Tennys Sandgren in the quarter-finals, extending his streak of fifth-set Australian Open victories to six, dating back to 2017. (Hint: Look out for that match to appear in our list of best Slam comebacks later in the week.)
Coming Tuesday: The best two Grand Slam matches of 2020.
The countdown to the 2021 Nitto ATP Finals, the prestigious season finale of the ATP Tour, has begun. The eight-day event, to be held from 14 to 21 November 2021, will see the best eight qualified singles players and doubles teams of the year compete at the Pala Alpitour Arena in Turin. It will also mark a historic handover to the Italian city, which will play host to the Nitto ATP Finals from 2021 to 2025.
With less than a year to go, today marks the launch of a coordinated national and international communication campaign by the City of Turin, Piedmont Region, Turin Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Turin, in collaboration with ATP and the Italian Tennis Federation (FIT), the tournament organisers. The campaign will see the city of Turin lit up in the promotional colours of the 2021 Nitto ATP Finals, and will also mark the official ticketing launch for the event.
In keeping with the major events strategy of Turin, the tournament will have a strong focus on innovation, in addition to environment and sustainability. By employing cutting-edge technological solutions, spectators and tourists will be able to follow matches and experience the event throughout the city. Ticketing promotions will also focus on attracting younger generations and schools closer to the sport.
The event has received considerable commitment from a portfolio of globally renowned commercial partners. The Japanese giant Nitto Denko Corporation will continue as Title Partner of the Nitto ATP Finals until 2025, while Intesa Sanpaolo will welcome the event in Turin as Host Partner. Lavazza will join Emirates and FedEx as Platinum partners, Gold Partners include EA7 Emporio Armani, Rolex and Valmora Mineral Water, and Silver Partners include Dunlop, Italgas and Iren luce gas e servizi.
Andrea Gaudenzi, ATP Chairman, said: “We have no doubts that the City of Turin will prove exceptional hosts for the Nitto ATP Finals, with their focus on innovation and putting fans’ experience at the heart of everything they do. Launching the countdown to the tournament is an exciting milestone, and we look forward to five years of close collaboration with all event partners, to continue to build upon the growth of our season finale.”
Angelo Binaghi, FIT Chairman, said: “It has been two years since Turin bid to host the Nitto ATP Finals from 2021-2025. After prevailing over forty foreign cities, and following two years of extraordinary commitment, the real countdown to Turin now begins. We would not have done it without the passion and drive of the region, in particular the Mayor of Turin, Chiara Appendino, and without the fundamental support of the Government, the Piedmont Region and our brand Partners. On behalf of the entire national tennis movement, within which the Nitto ATP Finals will provide a formidable promotional uplift, we extend our thanks. I do not hesitate to define this moment as the happiest in the Federation’s 110-year history.”
Vincenzo Spadafora, Minister for Youth policies and Sport, said: “The Nitto ATP Finals, from 2021 to 2025 in Turin, will open a season of great international sport in Italy. The tournament represents an opportunity for Turin and Piedmont to earn a special place in the hearts of tennis fans around the world. The great teamwork of the FIT, the City of Turin and the Piedmont Region, with the support of the Government, has made this important achievement possible.”
Chiara Appendino, Mayor of Turin, said: “Turin has a long tradition of sport and, thanks to an extraordinary team effort, we are delighted to bring the Nitto ATP Finals to our city. We look ahead to the next five years with determination, confident in the knowledge the event that will have a positive economic impact to our territory of about €600 million and strengthen the image of Turin all over the world. I thank everyone who made it possible and who is working with us. It will be an extraordinary event.”
Alberto Cirio, President of Piedmont Region, said: “Sport has always been a powerful means of working together and, with the difficult circumstances we currently face, team spirit is now more important than ever. Health data from our Region shows improvement, which we must protect and consolidate, to allow a sustainable restart. The Nitto ATP Finals will be one of the engines of this restart, a great opportunity for our territory to look ahead, and to get back to talking about Turin and Piedmont in every part of the world.”
Tickets for the 2021 Nitto ATP Finals are now on sale at NittoATPFinals.com.
It was in 1993 that former World No. 25 Fernando Meligeni reigned on home soil in Sao Paulo, launching his pro career with a first ATP Challenger Tour title. Now, 27 years later, the Brazilian’s nephew is carving a path of his own.
Same city, same result, different Meligeni. On Sunday, Felipe Meligeni celebrated his maiden moment at the Sao Paulo Open Tennis, capturing his first Challenger crown in emphatic fashion. With his family and girlfriend in attendance, the 22-year-old dropped one set all week on the clay of the Clube Hipico Santo Amaro. It all culminated in a 6-2, 7-6(1) final victory over Portugal’s Frederico Ferreira Silva.
It was an emotional day for Meligeni, who broke down in tears during the trophy ceremony. To win your first Challenger title is a special achievement. But doing so in your home country and in front of your loved ones created the perfect environment for the Brazilian.
“I’m speechless,” exclaimed Meligeni. “I didn’t expect that. My first Challenger title. I just didn’t expect it. I am very happy. It’s very exciting. I tried to stay as calm as possible. I played very well and it was a sensational week. It was nice to have my girlfriend and my family supporting me in this achievement. And my sister (Carolina) won an ITF title in Egypt today as well. It’s a double celebration weekend.”
Meligeni is hoping to follow in his uncle’s footsteps and establish himself inside the Top 100 of the FedEx ATP Rankings. During his 13-year career, Fernando won more than 200 matches, claimed three ATP Tour titles and reached the Roland Garros semi-finals in 1999. He would secure nine victories over Top 10 opponents, including former World No. 1s Pete Sampras, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Patrick Rafter, Carlos Moya and Andy Roddick.
While Felipe has a long way to go to get to his uncle’s level, he acknowledges that this is a significant step in his career. In February, in his ATP Tour debut, he took a set off World No. 3 Dominic Thiem at the Rio Open presented by Claro. Now, he is an ATP Challenger Tour champion.
“I really wanted to end the year among the Top 250 in the world and to be able to compete in Grand Slam qualifying in 2021. I have one more tournament next week and I want to lower my ranking even more. Who knows, at the end of next year I could be Top 100.”
Meligeni isn’t only impressing on the singles court. A former junior Grand Slam doubles champion, at the 2016 US Open, he would team up with Luis David Martinez to take the doubles crown in Sao Paulo as well. It marked their second straight week with a title together, following their victory in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
Meligeni soars 64 spots to a career-high No. 242 in the FedEx ATP Rankings and is up to No. 123 in the FedEx ATP Doubles Rankings. He will conclude his 2020 campaign at next week’s Challenger season finale in his hometown of Campinas.
The ATP Tour season might be over, but dreams are still being realized on the ATP Challenger Tour.
One year ago, Thiago Tirante was in London as a Nitto ATP Finals sparring partner, hitting with the likes of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. This week, making just his fourth Challenger appearance, Tirante celebrated a breakout campaign in Lima, Peru. The 19-year-old became the youngest player from Argentina to reach a Challenger final since Facundo Arguello in 2011.
The native of La Plata would eventually fall to Daniel Elahi Galan in Sunday’s final, but not before capturing all the headlines in Lima. Having entered the week with just one victory in his young career on the circuit, he left with an unforgettable run to the championship as a qualifier. Tirante, who rises 163 spots to a career-high No. 376 in the FedEx ATP Rankings, joins Carlos Alcaraz, Lorenzo Musetti, Brandon Nakashima and Tomas Machac as teenagers to reach a final in 2020.
Tirante, who worked for his mom at their hometown pharmacy during the tour’s COVID-19 hiatus, also trained at his uncle’s tennis club in La Plata. When the professional circuit resumed in August, he would capture his first pro title at an ITF event in Tunisia and later followed that up with his dream week in Lima.
The Argentine introduced himself with stunning shotmaking, amazing agility and dogged defence. A ‘Hot Shot’ machine, he submitted a pair of immediate contenders for our Top 5 Challenger Shots of November…
Italy’s first capital will be the epicentre of the tennis world next November as the Nitto ATP Finals moves to Turin, a stunning city in Northern Italy that’s known for its grand palazzos, fabulous regional cuisine, Baroque architecture, and its rich sporting tradition.
After 12 years anchored at The O2 in London, the move to Turin could not be better timed. No other nation has made more recent progress in producing top tennis talent than the glorious country that gave us pizza, pasta and the piano, among many other indispensable treasures. There are now eight Italian players, including Turin native Lorenzo Sonego, in the Top 100 of the FedEx ATP Rankings, double the number from 10 years ago. Many more are likely to follow thanks to the country’s substantial investment in the sport, which includes supporting the second most ATP Challenger tournaments in the world, behind only the United States.
According to Alberto Sacco, Turin’s Deputy Mayor in charge of Commerce and Tourism, the city’s drive to bring the world’s greatest tennis players to Torino, as the Italians call the city, started with its young, tennis-loving mayor, Chiara Appendino, who met her husband on a tennis court. Mayor Appendino told the Italian tennis channel Supertennis that the success of tournaments like the Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan and the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in Rome and Italian players like Jannik Sinner, Matteo Berrettini, and Sonego helped bring the Nitto ATP Finals to her hometown. “We are extremely proud that Turin has been chosen to host the [Nitto] ATP Finals (from) 2021-2025, as sport has long been a significant part of the history and the culture of our city,” Mayor Appendino said.
Sacco, says that the Torinesi, as natives of Turin are called, can’t wait to welcome tennis fans and players to their city. “Torino is a beautiful city with a good climate, incredible palaces, great food, beautiful hotels, shops and museums.”
Indeed, travellers have been raving about underrated Turin since at least 1878 when Mark Twain spent time in the city and fell in love with the place.
“Turin is a beautiful city, its spaciousness exceeds, I think, everything that has ever been conceived before,” he wrote. “Its streets are extraordinarily wide, the paved squares prodigious, the houses are huge and well-built…One walks along these spacious and always sheltered streets, and along the way passes by the most gracious shops and the most inviting restaurants.”
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche lived in Turin a decade after Twain’s visit, and fell in love with the city’s miles of porticos, its second-hand bookstores, and its gelato. He called it “the capital of discovery, the first place in which I am possible”.
If you’re never been to Turin, you may only be aware of a few of its principal claims to fame. Surrounded by rolling green hills and Alpine peaks, it’s the home of the Juventus football club; it hosted the Winter Olympics in 2006, and the Cathedral of Turin holds the Shroud of Turin, an ancient burial shroud depicting Jesus of Nazareth, which believers think he was wrapped in after his crucifixion. But there’s a lot more to know and love about this enchanting city of about 900,000 on the banks of Italy’s longest river, the Po.
Tourist arrivals plunged in Italy and around the world in 2020, but with Covid-19 vaccines on the way, Italy’s top destinations — Rome, Venice, and Florence — will no doubt be inundated with visitors thanks to a massive pent up demand from people around the world who’ve been cooped up and want to travel. If you love Italy and want to enjoy its dolce vita without the crowds and high prices, a lovely, unspoiled city like Turin is well worth a second look, especially if you’re a tennis fan who’d like to take in the tournament along with a dose of Italian culture.
Founded about 2,400 years ago by a Celtic tribe, the Taurini, the original name for Turin comes from the Celtic word “tau”, which means mountain. Torino means “little bull” and the bull is a symbol of the city. The Savoy family conquered the city and ruled for some 600 years.
Turin was a hotbed of Italian nationalism and served as Italy’s first unified capital from 1861 until 1865 when it moved to Florence (and later Rome.) It was and still is a centre for trade and industry and the great wealth that commerce has brought the region resulted in what is now a bounty for the visitor: spectacular palaces, cathedrals, gardens, parks and public art galore. It’s no wonder that Conde Nasté Traveler magazine has called Turin the Paris of Italy.
A few of the area’s standout attractions include the fabulous art and architecture of the Savoy Residences, a collection of palazzos, villas and other notable buildings that are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Museo Egizio, which has the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities outside Egypt, and the national museum of cinema, where you can check out Federico Fellini’s famous red scarf and learn about the city’s contribution to Italy’s film culture.
Turin is also a city of readers. In his book, Stranger in Turin, Italo Calvino called it a city of “rational, clarifying intelligence”. Liberia Luxemburg, the city’s oldest bookstore, is worth a trip, as are the bookstalls along the Via Po, the street where Nietzsche is said to have gone mad after seeing a horse flogged while out for a stroll on January 3, 1889.
Of course, this being Italy, you’d have to try very, very hard to find something bad to eat or drink in Turin and the surrounding region of Piedmont. Sacco says that the city is Italy’s unofficial chocolate capital; there’s an annual chocolate festival that takes place each year in November, typically right around the same time as the Nitto ATP Finals. Bicerin is Turin’s take on a decadent hot chocolate — it’s a layered mix of chocolate, espresso and heavy cream or milk served in a tulip-shaped glass.
Turin is also home to Grom, one of the world’s premier gelato chains. A great local flavour to try at Grom or another local institution like Alberto Marchetti Gelaterie is gianduia, which is a milk chocolate-hazelnut mix that inspired the recipe for Nutella. The city is also home to the coffee company, Lavazza; you can people-watch and get your caffeine fix in style at one of Turin’s historic cafe’s like Al Bicerin, founded in 1763, or the Art Nouveau Caffè Baratti & Milano, opened in 1873.
Sacco says that November, when the tournament will be held in 2021, is an ideal time to visit his hometown. “It’s not too hot and not too cold,” he said. “November is one of the best months in Torino. There’s a modern art festival and it’s the month where you can find white truffles, which come from Alba, near Torino.”
There are 46 Michelin star restaurants in Piedmont, nine of them in Turin.
The key sporting rivalry in Turin that defines relationships and establishes bragging rights is the Derby della Mole, which pits local football clubs Juventus and Torino against one another. The derby is named after the Mole Antonelliana, a striking 19th Century building crowned with a huge dome and conical spire. You can take a glass elevator to the top for panoramic views of the city. It was once a synagogue but is now home to the Cinema Museum.
Sacco, a Juventus fan from before birth by his reckoning, says that Torinesi tend to support Torino, while Juventus is supported by the working class, particularly those who came from other parts of the country to work in Turin in the 1970’s. If you don’t have a chance to take in the derby while in town, you can at least tour Juventus’ stadium, which has a museum devoted to the team’s history.
Sacco says that the city is handling the pandemic quite well and is confident it will be more than ready to host tennis fans in a full arena at this time next year.
The arena is located across from one of the city’s loveliest parks and has great public transportation links with the city centre, which is just a few minutes away. Turin is just an hour away from Milan by high-speed train or two hours to the Bergamo airport, which is service by a number of low cost carriers like Ryanair.
The city known as the cradle of Italian liberty is known as one of Italy’s commercial capitals and is among its wealthiest cities, but Sacco insists that it’s also a youthful place with more than 100,000 students where people know how to have fun. As the locals say in Piedmontese dialect, a l’é tut bin— everything is fine in Torino.
“Torino is full of open-air bars, we go out onto the streets, we drink coffee and wine until late into the night,” he says. “Come to Piazza Vittorio, one of the biggest squares in the world, it’s full of people eating outside, it’s a big party for everyone. You have to come see it yourself.”
