Is it busy on the ATP Challenger Tour - and among the women?
At the second highest level of professional men's tennis, there is still a lot going on these days. For women, on the other hand, it looks rather poor.
by Jens Huiber
last edit: Dec 07, 2021, 12:59 pm
Maia in Portugal, Forli (for the third time) in Italy, Antalya in Turkey and finally Florianopolis in Brasilieb: These are the places where ATP Challenger tournaments will be played this week, with reasonable prize money, but good points for those players who at least reach the semi-finals. Example Forli: As in the previous week, the winner will receive 80 points for the ATP world rankings.
Maxime Cressy was so free on Sunday with his final win against Matthias Bachinger. The American is back this week, with Cressy starting as a tournament favorite. Bachinger, on the other hand, has taken time off, with Julian Lenz, the only German in the main field, already eliminated in round one.
No one of the top 100 players is in the running at the current events, but from an Austrian point of view, a look at Antalya could also be worthwhile: On the one hand, because Filip Misovic is one of the hopefuls in red-white-red at the start there. With a view to the Davis Cup away game in early 2022, you could also keep an eye on Duckhee Lee, number two from South Korea.
Much praise for the WTA in the Peng Shuai case
For the women, however, it looks extremely poor, even if this week in Angers, France, there is finally another WTA Tour 125 tournament. The Austrian Julia Grabher is already in the round of 16, the entry list is heavily influenced by local heroes like Kristina Mladenovic, Oceane Dodin or Clara Burel.
In the last few days Viktoria Kuzmova and Ekaterina Makarova, a former Grand Slam winner in doubles, have shown themselves in Jablonec, but in the case of Kuzmova, the current number 52 in the WTA charts, probably more because of their homeland than because of the possibility of to get points for the world rankings at a $ 25,000 ITF tournament.
The WTA is currently receiving a lot of praise for its behavior in the Peng Shuai case, and rightly so. In terms of earning potential for its female players, the organization lags far behind its male colleagues. What was already shown last autumn after the French Open: While Djokovic and Co. were still able to collect points and prize money at various tournaments and the finals in London, the women only played in Ostrava and Linz.
One level below, the program for the men was also significantly richer, which may be due to the failure of the WTA to fail to establish a stable intermediate league between the ITF and WTA Tour tournaments. Because of course the men are also currently playing their ITF events (which will be a little better endowed with points in the coming year). But for the Cressys, Bachingers and Co. there are also several possibilities to play their way up to the top 100 weekly with realistic hopes. For the women, the next one comes only in Limoges. The professional tennis player eats hard.