After making his first Grand Slam semi-final at the start of the year at the Australian Open, Hyeon Chung is now through to his first ATP World Tour Masters 1000 quarter-final at the BNP Paribas Open. The 21-year-old South Korean raced past Pablo Cuevas, 6-1, 6-3, on Wednesday at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. Watch Full Match Replays Chung’s breakthrough came with victory at the inaugural Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan in November (d. Rublev) and since then he has gone from strength to strength, racking up a 15-5 record already in 2018. Last year, the right-hander did not claim his 15th tour-level win until the Masters 1000 in Montreal in August. “I'm just starting with a new team...
Hyeon Chung talks about reaching his first ATP World Tour Masters 1000 quarter-final at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells. Watch live tennis at tennistv.com.
Combining power and precision with a burgeoning confidence on the big stages, inaugural Next Gen ATP Finals champion Hyeon Chung is through to the fourth round of the BNP Paribas Open for the first time. Experienced Czech 12th seed Tomas Berdych was the 21-year-old’s latest victim on Monday night. Unlike Chung’s previous match – in which he battled for nearly three hours to get past Dusan Lajovic – he cruised past Berdych 6-4, 6-4 in 83 minutes. It is his first victory in three FedEx ATP Head2Head meetings with the Czech and the first time he had even taken a set. Chung had already tasted hard-court success on a big stage this season after he became the first South Korean...
Without Hyeon Chung's breakout in Milan last November, would the 21-year-old have made South Korean history and reached the Australian Open semi-finals? Before the Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan, Chung had made only one semi-final in his career (2017 Munich). Winning back-to-back-to-back-to-back matches was not something he did with ease. Then the Next Gen ATP Finals happened, and everything changed, says Neville Godwin, Chung's coach since December. In Milan, Chung blitzed through the draw, winning five consecutive matches for the first time in his career. Sure, the rules were different, but the pressure points were more abundant than ever – deciding deuce points, tie-breaks at three-all, and shorter sets that put an even higher premium on service breaks –...
