A LOOK BACK Internationaux BNP Paribas (Noumea, New Caledonia): Noah Rubin will be the first to admit that 2017 was a struggle, having missed nearly four months due to a sprained right wrist and bone bruise. Playing the best tennis of his young career, the 21-year-old was coming off a second round meeting with Roger Federer at the Australian Open and ATP Challenger Tour title in nearby Launceston when he sustained the injury. Rubin would conclude the season outside the Top 200 and was in search of a much-needed confidence boost as 2018 got underway. It did not take long for the New York native to find exactly that. A third Challenger crown would jump start his campaign, dropping just...
After three runner-up finishes at the Qatar ExxonMobil Open, Gael Monfils finally captured the title with victory over Andrey Rublev in the championship match on Saturday. But he was not the only one who received hardware, as Tournament Director Karim Alami accepted a trophy honouring the Doha event's place as one of the Tournaments of the Year in the 2017 ATP World Tour Awards presented by Moët & Chandon. The Qatar ExxonMobil Open reclaimed the award in the 250 category after previously sharing the honour with the St. Petersburg Open in 2015. Held in the opening week of the ATP World Tour season with ExxonMobil as title sponsor since its 1993 inception, the set new attendance records in 2017 under...
There is certainly no lack of hype surrounding China’s Wu Yibing. It was a landmark year for the 18-year-old in 2017, after all. The right-hander served as a practice partner at the Nitto ATP Finals, played his first two ATP World Tour main draws in Chengdu and Shangha, won both the boys’ singles and doubles titles at the US Open, reached the top spot in the junior rankings, and perhaps most impressively, claimed his first ATP Challenger Tour title in Shanghai — becoming the fourth player in five years to win a junior Slam and a Challenger title in the same season. Capturing that trophy at 17, Yibing was also one of just four players aged 17 or younger to...
Chinese NextGenATP star Wu Yibing talks about his progress on the ATP World Tour, ahead of his debut appearance at the ASB Classic in Auckland. Video courtesy ASB Classic.
Jordan Thompson made good use of a wild card at the 2017 Sydney International, winning his first-round match before falling in a battle against the fifth seed. Italian veteran Paolo Lorenzi had no intention of letting the home favourite advance to the second round this year. The 36-year-old defeated Thompson 7-6(5), 6-4 to set up a second-round match against top seed Albert Ramos-Vinolas. The World No. 43 was broken in his first service game and faced a break point in his second, but steadied the ship from there. After claiming an intense first-set tie-break, the right-hander sprinted to a 3-0 lead in the second set. Despite failing to serve out the match at 5-3, Lorenzi broke his opponent a third...