Looking for Tennis and Racket Sports International News?

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."

[ATP APP]

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.

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.

[BREAK POINT]

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.

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.”

[ATP APP]

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.

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.”

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.

[ATP APP]

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.

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.

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.

[ATP APP]

A memorable week on the ATP Challenger Tour week saw Thanasi Kokkinakis win his first Challenger title since May 2021 and fellow-Aussie Max Purcell rally to win the Chennai Challenger. Italian Giulio Zeppieri also triumphed at the Challenger 75 event in Cherbourg.

In the Manama Challenger 125 final, Kokkinakis ended the dream run of 19-year-old Abedallah Shelbayh, who was playing in just his third Challenger event. The Australian, who is a five-time Challenger champion, downed Shelbayh 6-1, 6-4 to capture the Bahrain Ministry of Interior Tennis Challenger. However, the teen still left Bahrain with a piece of history.

The Manama crown marks Kokkinakis’ first Challenger triumph since his title in Biella, Italy almost two years ago. The 26-year-old, who is featured in the Netflix series Break Point, returns to the Top 100 of the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, which he briefly fell out of this past month when he was unable to defend his Adelaide International 2 crown.

Despite the final loss, Shelbayh became the first player from Jordan and the youngest Arab to reach a Challenger final. In the quarter-final, the Amman native upset top seed Jason Kubler. Shelbayh graduated from the Rafa Nadal Academy in 2021 before playing college tennis at the University of Florida. Following his freshman year, Shelbayh turned pro. The Manama finalist climbs to a career-high 276 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings.

Brazilian Thiago Monteiro reached the second round at a tour-level event for the first time this season on Monday when he clawed past former Rio Open presented by Claro champion Dominic Thiem 6-1, 3-6, 7-6(2) at the ATP 500 event.

In a hard-fought clash, the home favourite raced out of the blocks, winning the first five games before sealing the set on serve to move ahead. After former World No. 3 Thiem levelled, Monteiro held his nerve in the third set, saving all four break points he faced to advance after two hours and 46 minutes in their first ATP Head2Head meeting.

“It was a tough beginning of the year, but I feel at the same time I have been playing at a high level,” Monteiro said. “Trying to push harder and harder. I have had some tough loses, some close matches. Now winning my first match at such a big tournament is very important.

“In the tie-break I thought I played very solid and I am very happy to get my first win.”

[ATP APP]

One of the breakthrough stars of the early part of the season has been Jiri Lehecka. The 2022 Next Gen ATP Finals runner-up made a big impact Down Under when he battled to the quarter-finals of the Australian Open with wins over stars including Borna Coric, Cameron Norrie and Felix Auger-Aliassime.

How has he stepped up against top-tier competition? Power. Lots of power.

According to statistics courtesy of Tennis Data Innovations and TennisViz, the Czech star already has one of the biggest forehands in the world. Over the past 52 weeks, Lehecka’s average forehand speed has been 79.2 miles per hour with an average spin rate of 2,992 revolutions per minute. That is a daunting combination of speed and spin.

It puts Lehecka in the same neighbourhood as renowned ball-bashers Felix Auger-Aliassime (78.4mph and 3,178rpm), Andrey Rublev (78.2mph and 2,917rpm) and Jannik Sinner (77.8mph and 2,901rpm). The ATP Tour average for forehand speed and spin are 75.1 miles per hour and 2,713 revolutions per minute, respectively.

Chart courtesy of Tennis Data Innovations and TennisViz, a joint venture between the ATP and ATP Media.
Tennis Data Innovations and TennisViz also produces a metric called ’Shot Quality’, which analyses each shot's speed, spin, depth, width and the impact it has on the opponent. Lehecka’s 52-week average on the forehand side is 8, and it has improved to 8.3 over his past 10 matches.

Alexander Bublik arrived at the Open 13 Provence chasing his maiden tour-level win of the 2023 season. The Kazakhstani dug deep to get the job done on Monday, when he rallied to a 5-7, 6-3, 6-4 first-round victory against Filip Krajinovic in Marseille.

Bublik engineered the turnaround with a late break of Krajinovic’s serve in the second set and two early breaks in the third. Although the 25-year-old was then broken once himself as his lead in the decider was cut to 3-2, Bublik held firm to clinch a two-hour, nine-minute triumph in which he sent down 18 aces.

With the win, Bublik extended his ATP Head2Head series lead against Krajinovic to 2-0. The pair’s previous clash also came on an indoor hard court in southern France, with Bublik a straight-sets winner in the Montpellier semi-finals last year en route to claiming his maiden ATP Tour title.

The World No. 50 will seek to build on Monday’s win in a second-round meeting with eighth seed Marc-Andrea Huesler or Gregoire Barrere. Bublik is competing at the ATP 250 in southern France for the second time, having reached the semi-finals on tournament debut in 2020.

[ATP APP]

Another week, another Andy Murray comeback win in 2023.

The 46-time tour-level titlist showed trademark resilience to rally to a 4-6, 1-6, 7-6(4) first-round victory against Lorenzo Sonego on Monday at the Qatar ExxonMobil Open. The two-time Doha champion saved three match points before prevailing at the ATP 250 tournament.

Murray saved the match points from 4-5, 15/40 on his own serve in the deciding set and later trailed 0/3 in the deciding tie-break. The 35-year-old raised his level in style from there, however, winning seven of the last eight points to clinch a two-hour, 30-minute win.

“It was really tough,” said Murray post-match. “We never played together, or practised with each other before, so I didn’t know exactly how the match was going to go and it took a while to get used to his game.

“He’s a very aggressive player, takes a lot of chances, but it’s high-risk tennis. He rolled the dice at the end, and it looked like he had the momentum. But thankfully in the mid-part of that tie-break he made a couple of mistakes and I managed to turn it around.”

He may spend much of the year away from home competing on the ATP Tour, but Felix Auger-Aliassime never feels too far from his roots.

The Canadian played his part in a team-event double in 2022, leading Canada to victory at the ATP Cup and the Davis Cup Finals. The pride Auger-Aliassime feels when playing for his country maintains a connection he has always felt between his childhood and his life as a pro.

“Growing up back in Montreal, Canada was a great upbringing,” the 22-year-old recently said in an interview with the ATP Tour. “My dad was a tennis coach and still is today, so he brought tennis into the family for my sister and I. So we grew up playing tennis every day after school. I had this dream of, I guess, being in the position I am today.”

Staying positive through the hurdles. That's the key for @felixtennis ? pic.twitter.com/kYHNHDQsMV

Auger-Aliassime is renowned for his cool, calm and collected on-court demeanour, even when the going gets tough. Netflix’s Break Point followed the Canadian during his 2022 Roland Garros campaign, when he fell to an agonising five-set defeat to icon Rafael Nadal in the fourth round. The Spaniard went on to lift the trophy for a record-extending 14th time at the clay-court Grand Slam.

A three-tournament week on the ATP Tour saw Daniil Medvedev seal a return to the Top 10 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings after claiming his first title of the year in Rotterdam, while Carlos Alcaraz and Taylor Fritz also lifted trophies in Buenos Aires and Delray Beach, respectively.

ATPTour.com looks at the movers of the week as of Monday, 20 February 2023.

View Pepperstone ATP Rankings

[ATP APP]

No. 8 Daniil Medvedev, +3
The 27-year-old returned to the Top 10 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings after clinching his 16th tour-level crown at the ABN AMRO Open, an ATP 500 held in Rotterdam. Medvedev dropped just one set en route to the final before he rallied past Jannik Sinner to win the trophy. Read Rotterdam Final Report & Watch Highlights.

Having won opening-round matches at the past two majors, Brandon Holt could be forgiven for wanting to spend less time on the ATP Challenger Tour and steel his focus on tour-level events.

But at No. 199 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, the 24-year-old American realises that he still has dues to pay before earning the right to play at the top echelon of the sport on a consistent basis. In fact, the son of former WTA World No. 1 Tracy Austin is thankful to be playing tennis at all.

A career-threatening hand injury in 2021 nearly forced Holt to hang up his racquets and put his Real Estate Development degree to use. But now that he’s 100 per cent healthy, Holt is aiming towards more success on the Challenger Tour.

“In 2021, I went to an ITF tournament in Tunisia and instantly started feeling pain in my hand,” Holt said. “I came home and went to the doctor and was told it was this, then it was that. It ended up being a tumour in my bone [osteoid osteoma] that was growing. They had to do surgery on it. It was like touch and go, they didn't really know if I'd be able to play again.

Argentine journalist Sebastian Torok was presented at the Argentina Open with the 2022 Ron Bookman Excellence Award by tournament director and former Argentinian player Martin Jaite.

The LA NACION journalist also received the 2023 Sports Excellence Award which was introduced four years ago by ATP 250 event held in Buenos Aires.

[ATP APP]

Torok has been a journalist for the Argentine newspaper LA NACION since 2000. He has covered football, rugby, boxing and handball but specialises in tennis, reporting on Argentina’s Davis Cup Finals title run in 2016.

The Argentine has received international recognition at the AIPS Sport Media Awards for various investigations and one of his career highlights as a journalist was interviewing Roger Federer in Basel in 2019.

Ten years after winning their second team title in Buenos Aires, Simone Bolelli and Fabio Fognini returned to the winners’ circle in Argentina’s capital city Sunday.

The six-time tour-level titlists cruised to a 6-2, 6-4 final victory against Nicolas Barrientos and Ariel Behar at the 2023 Argentina Open. Bolelli and Fognini didn’t drop a set all week en route to their first title of the season. In the championship match, the third seeds saved all six break points faced and won 13 of 16 points off their second serve to collect the trophy.

[ATP APP]

Their title run in Buenos Aires comes after an 0-2 start to the season, including a disappointing first-round exit in Melbourne, where they were seeded ninth. The Italians won their maiden Grand Slam trophy at the Australian Open in 2015.

This past season, Bolelli and Fognini won two team titles: Rio de Janeiro and Umag. Five of their six titles have come on clay.

For the second straight year, South Florida residents Marcelo Arevalo and Jean-Julien Rojer have made themselves at home at the Delray Beach Open. The El Salvadoran-Dutch duo became the third team to repeat as champions at the ATP 250 with a 6-3, 6-4 win against Rinky Hijikata and Reese Stalder in Sunday's final.

"It's really special for us," Rojer said after the pair won its sixth title in the past 13 months. "Playing here is a treat. We really enjoy it. We spend most of our time practising in the area. We're happy to be back. We had a lot of success here last year, decided to come back and defended our title so we're super happy about that. We're just going to enjoy it for a few days."

After making their team debut in Delray Beach in 2021, the pair reunited in 2022 and won five titles, including the Roland Garros crown. The team is now on a seven-match winning streak in Delray Beach after twice winning the title as the top seeds.

"We're super happy that we were able to do it again," said the 32-year-old Arevalo. "There were other options that we could play but we stayed loyal to the Delray Beach Open and to the people here, to the crowd, this amazing crowd that we have here. We're extremely happy that we were able to play the tournament and ended up winning the tournament as well."

[ATP APP]

Taylor Fritz was on course for an eight-set sweep en route to the Delray Beach Open title. Instead, the American needed to dig deep in a final set after missing out on a championship point against Miomir Kecmanovic in Sunday's final.

The top seed and World No. 7 was up to the challenge in a 6-0, 5-7, 6-2 win for his fifth ATP Tour title and first of 2023. Four of those trophies have come in the past 12 months, beginning with Fritz's Indian Wells triumph last March, as documented on Netflix's Break Point.

"My first time back here in quite a while and the event was amazing," said Fritz, who was competing at the ATP 250 for the sixth time, with his previous appearance coming in 2020. "The fans especially, the turnout was incredible and it makes me really proud to be an American playing at a home event, with how many people were in the stands."

"This year was incredible after losing in the first and second round [almost] every single year I'd been here. I couldn't be happier with coming back and having this result."

[BREAK POINT]

Carlos Alcaraz went more than three months without a competitive match as he recovered from abdominal and hamstring injuries. This week at the Argentina Open, it looked like the Spaniard had never left.

The World No. 2 overwhelmed second seed Cameron Norrie 6-3, 7-5 on Sunday to claim his seventh ATP Tour title and his first since last year's US Open. Alcaraz lost just one set in his four victories at the Buenos Aires ATP 250, in his first match back against Laslo Djere. By improving to 7-2 in tour-level finals, Alcaraz moved within 590 points of No. 1 Novak Djokovic in the Pepperstone ATP Live Rankings.

"I felt very comfortable playing the final," Alcaraz said post-match. "I knew that it was going to be really difficult. I started really focussed on what I had to do at the beginning, my game, my level.  This is the level that I have to play in finals."

The 19-year-old used a seven-game surge to take command of the final against Norrie, turning an early 2-3 deficit in to a 6-3, 3-0 lead as his relentless pressure reaped rewards. Alcaraz did not face a break point until he failed to serve out the match in a nervy 5-3 game.

Down 0/15 while serving at 5-5, the Spaniard bravely roped a forehand swinging volley to reassert himself. The next game was the longest of the match, as Alcaraz battled through two deuces before sealing victory with a forehand drop shot — a tactic he turned to time and again throughout the week.