Looking for Tennis and Racket Sports International News?

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.

Editor's note: This story was translated from ATPTour.com/es

The Alcaraz family spans five generations in El Palmar, a parish of Murcia with a little over 24,000 inhabitants that is now known the world over thanks to the sporting feats of Carlos Alcaraz.

Yet this fledgling superstar surrounds himself with people that keep his feet firmly on the ground. The humility and people skills of Team Alcaraz are an important part of understanding the thrilling story he continues to write with his racquet. Some situations and actions speak louder than words.

The team arrived in Buenos Aires for Alcaraz’s comeback to the ATP Tour after three months away at this week’s Argentina Open. Visiting the venue for the first time, Carlos Alcaraz González, Carlos’ father, surprised Martin Jaite, the tournament director, with an unexpected gift.

He introduced himself before showing the former Top 10 player a photo of him after winning a tournament in 1983 in Murcia. One of the ballboys seen alongside Jaite in the picture is Carlos Sr., who had kept the photo at his parents’ home having asked Jaite to sign it for him as a momento.

Daniil Medvedev cemented his return to the Top 10 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings by continuing his domination of Jannik Sinner on Sunday at the ABN AMRO Open, where the sixth seed completed a 5-7, 6-2, 6-2 victory in the championship match.

Medvedev had to retain his composure after dropping a hard-fought opening set at the indoor ATP 500 event in Rotterdam. Montpellier champion Sinner started aggressively in his pursuit of back-to-back ATP Tour titles, but Medvedev responded by digging deep, dialling in on serve and frequently defying the Italian with some outstanding defence to improve his lead in the pair’s ATP Head2Head series to 6-0.

“It was a very tough match, I would say mentally for both of us, I think,” said Medvedev, who now holds a 10-4 record in Rotterdam. “Jannik was on top of me, especially in the first part of the first set. I managed to come back into the set even though, in my opinion, I was playing worse than him. Maybe that gave me some time to find my rhythm.

“I started playing just a little bit more offensive on a few shots, and it managed to work well at the beginning of the second set. I just managed to continue pushing him mentally down until the end of the match.”

With his two-hour, 29-minute win, Medvedev secured his 16th tour-level title, 15 of which have been won on hard courts. He will return to the Top 10 of the Pepperstone ATP Rankings on Monday as a result of his first title since his Vienna triumph last October, with the 27-year-old set to leapfrog Hubert Hurkacz, Holger Rune and Felix Auger-Aliassime to No. 8.

Ivan Dodig and Austin Krajicek capped a week of tie-break tension with a thrilling championship match victory on Sunday afternoon at the ABN AMRO Open, where the third seeds downed Rohan Bopanna and Matthew Ebden 7-6(5), 2-6, 12-10 to claim their first title of 2023.

Dodig and Krajicek faced a championship point at 9/10 in the Match Tie-break but reeled off three straight points to clinch their fourth ATP Tour title as a team. Earlier, they had also rallied from 3-5 in the opening set, which featured six service breaks.

The Croatian-American duo was frequently forced to dig deep during its title run at the indoor hard-court ATP 500. Dodig and Krajiceck prevailed in four tie-breaks and two Match Tie-breaks across their four matches at the Rotterdam Ahoy, where they were competing for the first time as a team.

[ATP APP]

Bopanna and Ebden converted five of eight break points in the final but were left to rue missed chances at key moments in the one-hour, 42-minute encounter. The Indian-Australian pair let slip two set points in the 10th game of the first set before also missing their chance to clinch victory in the Match Tie-break.

An action-packed February on the ATP Tour next week sees Rio de Janeiro, Doha and Marseille host some of the world’s top players.

The season’s first ATP 500 action on clay takes place at the Rio Open presented by Claro, where defending champion Carlos Alcaraz, Cameron Norrie and Lorenzo Musetti lead the field.

Meanwhile a pair of ATP 250 events — one outdoors and one indoors — also feature a host of top names. Andrey Rublev, Felix Auger-Aliassime and Daniil Medvedev are the top seeds under the Doha sun at the Qatar ExxonMobil Open, while Hubert Hurkacz and Jannik Sinner headline under the roof at the Open 13 Provence in Marseille.

ATPTour.com looks at five things to watch at each event.

[ATP APP]

Frances Tiafoe dipped his toes in the basketball world Friday when he competed in the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game. On Saturday, a six-time NBA All Star visited the tennis world in Buenos Aires.

Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler watched Carlos Alcaraz’s semi-final win against Bernabe Zapata Miralles at the Argentina Open. Alcaraz knew who Butler was, but this was their first meeting.

“I have seen him play several times. I have a lot of respect for him, after all he is a legend of his sport, a star and to have him come to see me is a privilege.” Alcaraz said. “I thanked him and invited him to the final.”

¿Querían saber cómo tira Carlos???

? @MiamiHEAT @NBALatam pic.twitter.com/iP1YQldVE3

The World No. 2 enjoys basketball and tries to keep up depending where he is in the world.

Miomir Kecmanovic was made to work at the Delray Beach Open on Saturday to reach his third ATP Tour final. But work the Serbian did, rallying past 2019 champion Radu Albot 7-6(8), 3-6, 6-2.

"I was a little bit nervous throughout the match," Kecmanovic said. "But luckily I was able to stay calm when it mattered, play good and I'm happy I was able to come through."

[ATP APP]

Kecmanovic and Albot were both seeking their 100th tour-level victory in the semi-final. Despite trailing by a break in the third set, it was Kecmanovic who was steadier in the crucial moments to triumph after two hours and 28 minutes.

"It feels awesome," the 23-year-old Kecmanovic said of reaching 100 wins. "It's crazy that I've been able to do that relatively quickly, so I'm pretty happy about that, proud. Hopefully I'll have a few more."

Cameron Norrie is finding his clay-court footing in Buenos Aires.

The second seed advanced to the Argentina Open final on Saturday with a 7-6(5), 6-4 victory against Peruvian Juan Pablo Varillas. Norrie will face World No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz in the final if the Spaniard ousts countryman Bernabe Zapata Miralles.

"It’s going to be a tough one for sure regardless of who I play," Norrie said. "I lost a tough final in Auckland, so hopefully I can get some good feelings back tomorrow in the final."

[ATP APP]

Norrie needed three sets to battle through his first two matches of the week at the ATP 250. However, the lefty raised his level in the semi-finals against a gritty foe in Varillas, who reached a career-high No. 94 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings in January.

Jannik Sinner delivered a flawless serving performance on Saturday to defeat home wild card Tallon Griekspoor and reach the championship match at the ABN AMRO Open in Rotterdam.

The Italian did not face a break point in his 7-5, 7-6(5) semi-final victory against the World No. 61 at the indoor ATP 500 event. Although Griekspoor competed fiercely in a richly entertaining encounter packed with clean baseline hitting and some deft volleying, Sinner’s ability to take his chances ultimately proved decisive.

“I felt a lot of pressure today,” acknowledged Sinner, when asked about taking on a home player. “I’m very happy with how I handled it, it was not easy from my side. I tried to play aggressive tennis. Sometimes I managed to do it, sometimes not, but this is part of the game.

“I’m very happy with how I played the tie-break also… [I’m] very happy to be again in a final, and tomorrow is obviously going to be a tough, tough challenge.”

The World No. 14, who has only been broken three times across his four matches this week at the Rotterdam Ahoy, converted the only break point of the match in the 12th game to claim the opening set and then held his nerve to claim a high-quality second-set tie-break. It was a seventh tour-level victory in a row for Sinner, who last week in Montpellier claimed his seventh ATP Tour title.

A decade ago, Simone Bolelli and Fabio Fognini lifted the Argentina Open trophy for the first time. On Sunday, the Italians will have a chance to do so again.

The third seeds advanced to the Buenos Aires final on Saturday when they eliminated Brazilian Marcelo Demoliner and Andrea Vavassori 6-3, 7-5. They will face Nicolas Barrientos and Ariel Behar for the trophy.

Bolelli and Fognini have not lost a set en route to the championship clash. In the semi-finals they won 88 per cent of their first-serve points and broke serve four times.

If the Italians triumph in the final, it will not be the first time they lift the trophy at a tournament at least 10 years apart. They also won in Umag 11 years apart, in 2011 and 2022.

[ATP APP]

Dialled-in defence and and a cool head at key moments have been the basis of Daniil Medvedev’s run at the ABN AMRO Open this week. Saturday’s semi-final clash against Grigor Dimitrov proved to be no exception.

The sixth seed delivered a comprehensive 6-1, 6-2 victory in 82 minutes against the Bulgarian to reach the final at the indoor hard-court tournament in Rotterdam for the first time. Medvedev was typically relentless from the baseline and converted six of 13 break points to reach his first tour-level championship match since he claimed the title in Vienna last October.

A match featuring several marathon exchanges threatened to become more complicated for Medvedev when Dimitrov recovered from 0-2 in the second set to earn three break points at 2-2, 0/40. The World No. 11 shut any potential comeback down in style, however, dropping just four more points in the match en route to increasing his ATP Head2Head series lead against Dimitrov to 5-2.

Court, covered ?

These two are getting the steps in today…
⁰@abnamroopen | #abnamroopen pic.twitter.com/6mI6WtOtx5

“It was an amazing match,” said Medvedev afterwards. “The score [looks] easy, but the match was not. I felt physically like I was playing five sets. [There were] some amazing rallies. It was 2-2, 0/40 for him in the second [set], so [I am happy] to manage to win it 6-2, just raise my level a little bit on serve and manage to keep consistent… He made a few more errors than he needed to make, and I’m happy with my level.”

Have you ever wondered how ATP players think the season will unfold and which of their peers they believe is due for a standout year or to crack the Top 10?

Last week we learned that Rafael Nadal, Jack Draper, and Thanasi Kokkinakis believe that Jannik Sinner will claim his first ATP Masters 1000 title this season. What will other say in part two of the fun 2023 predictions series? ATP sat down with Cameron Norrie, Andrey Rublev, Casper Ruud, Diego Schwartzman, Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe and Alexander Zverev to get their thoughts.

Norrie cracked a smile when he said, “I want to make some decent predictions and not just wing it!” when asked who will make their Top 10 debut this year.

[BREAK POINT]

According to the Briton and Diego Schwartzman, Italian Lorenzo Musetti, who is No. 20 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, is due to climb even higher. Frances Tiafoe, World No. 15, was also a popular choice among players.