Looking for Tennis and Racket Sports International News?

Two players have cracked the Top 100 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings for the first time after winning ATP Challenger Tour titles this week.

Argentine Camilo Ugo Carabelli went on an impressive run, dropping just one set this past week en route to winning the Directv Open Lima while Roman Safiullin continued his hot streak, during which he has won 12 of his past 13 matches to claim his third Challenger title at the Chicago Men’s Challenger.

Ugo Carabelli, 23, defeated three of his countrymen back-to-back-to-back in Lima, Peru, including a 6-2, 7-6(4) victory against 21-year-old Thiago Agustin Tirante in the final to claim his third Challenger Tour title and second this season (Buenos Aires). The third seed’s title extends Argentina’s lead to 16 Challenger titles this year and lifts Ugo Carabelli to 96 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings.

[ATP APP]

In a two-hour, 47 minute semi-final battle, the Buenos Aires native avenged his two previous losses to Tomas Martin Etcheverry (Santiago and Concepcion 2), ending the top seed’s hopes 6-3, 3-6, 7-5.

Casper Ruud’s standout 2022 continued with a semi-final run in Montreal that sees the Norwegian jump back into the Top 5 of the Pepperstone ATP Rankings. It was Pablo Carreno Busta who lifted the trophy at the National Bank Open Presented by Rogers, however, and the Spaniard’s maiden ATP Masters 1000 crown powers him back into the Top 20.

ATPTour.com looks at the movers of the week, as of Monday, 15 August.

[ATP APP]

No. 5 Casper Ruud, +2 (Joint Career High)
Ruud’s run to his first semi-final at the Canadian Masters 1000 event featured contrasting wins against Roberto Bautista Agut and Felix Auger-Aliassime. The Norwegian rallied for a hard-fought three-hour, 17-minute third-round triumph over Bautista Agut before dashing home hopes in style with a 6-1, 6-2 quarter-final win against Auger-Aliassime. Hubert Hurkacz proved too strong in the semi-finals, but Ruud rises two spots to No. 5 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings.

View Latest Pepperstone ATP Rankings

It rained on and off for most of Sunday in Cincinnati, but Karen Khachanov and Denis Shapovalov made the most of it in more ways than one.

The singles stars enjoyed the delays with the centre court crowd, even briefly dancing to the music during a delay before battling past Rohan Bopanna and Matwe Middelkoop 7-6(6), 6-7(12), 10-6 to reach the second round of the Western & Southern Open. 

"Seriously thanks to all the fans who stayed late and through the delays!!" Shapovalov wrote in an Instagram story. "Your energy the entire match was ?."

In singles action, Botic van de Zandschulp set a second-round meeting with World No. 1 Daniil Medvedev when he overcame American Maxime Cressy 6-2, 4-6, 6-4.

The Dutchman, who is making his debut in Cincinnati, fired seven aces and broke Cressy five times to advance after two hours and four minutes in a rain-disrupted clash at the ATP Masters 1000 event.

It’s been one of those years for Matteo Berrettini, the kind where you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The Italian kicked off 2022 in style with a career-best run to the Australian Open semi-finals. In February, he retired midway through his first-round matchup with American Tommy Paul in Acapulco due to abdominal woes. After Indian Wells, he sustained an injury to his right hand that necessitated surgery, forcing him to withdraw from the clay-court swing. Berrettini was just getting back into the swing of things on the grass, winning nine straight matches and sweeping back-to-back titles in Stuttgart and The Queen’s Club, when he tested positive for COVID-19. Wimbledon, where he would have been among the favourites, was suddenly out.

“I started to think it was like a prank or something, a joke, because I was feeling pretty good,” said Berrettini, the World No. 15, last week at the National Bank Open Presented by Rogers. “It was really tough. I was by myself. I was quarantined. There wasn’t anybody to hug or watch a movie with. It was just me in my room trying not to think about what would happen, think about the future.”

[ATP APP]

For Berrettini, who dropped his opener against eventual titlist Pablo Carreno Busta in Montreal, 6-3, 6-2, that future is now. A big result this week at the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati would do wonders to put him back in the running for a spot at the year-end Nitto ATP Finals. Currently 13th in the Pepperstone ATP Live Race To Turin, he’ll have his work cut out for him from the first round. On Tuesday, the 12th seed will open against Frances Tiafoe. He hasn’t faced the American since 2018, when he claimed a 6-3, 7-6(1) first-round decision on clay in Rome.

Daniil Medvedev will forever remember the Western & Southern Open, but not just for the reason you would expect.

Medvedev claimed his first ATP Masters 1000 title three years ago in Cincinnati, which will forever remain a special moment for him. But a lot happened behind the scenes that fans did not know at the time.

On Sunday, the 26-year-old revealed that it was unlikely he would make it through one match at the Lindner Family Tennis Center that year. The week before, Medvedev advanced to his first Masters 1000 final in Montreal. He was invited on a charter flight to Cincinnati, but that is where things went awry.

“The plane was delayed, maybe there was a thunderstorm or something,” Medvedev said. “I remember coming to my room and I was the No. 9 seed, so I was just one out from [getting] a bye and playing Wednesday, so I had to play Tuesday. I came [to] my room at like 4:30 in the morning [on Monday].”

[ATP APP]

The No. 1 team in the Pepperstone ATP Live Doubles Rankings padded its lead on Sunday in the Montreal final. Wesley Koolhof and Neal Skupski won their sixth title since joining forces this year by edging Daniel Evans and John Peers 6-2, 4-6, 10-6 to claim their second ATP Masters 1000 crown of the season.

The Dutch-British duo dominated the opening set but dropped the second despite clawing back an early break, setting up a dramatic Match Tie-break. They raced out to a 7/2 lead in the tie-break, with Skupski flicking a brilliant lob on the stretch to extend their advantage, then held their nerve to close out the win from 8/6. It was their third Match Tie-break win of the week.

"We played four very close matches [this week]," Koolhof said before the trophy ceremony. "It's never easy. These days there's no such thing as easy matches anymore. Very happy with the way we played, our second Masters 1000 title of the year. Things are going great so let's keep this run going."

[ATP APP]

Skupski sealed the victory for the third seeds with a backhand return winner down the line as the pair improved to 6-2 in tour-level finals this season by notching its 45th match win. The red-hot duo has also claimed titles this year in Melbourne, Adelaide-2, Doha, Madrid and 's-Hertogenbosch.

Former finalist David Goffin will need to work overtime if he is to return to the final weekend of the Western & Southern Open this year, but the Belgian completed the first part of his mission Sunday when he advanced through qualifying.

The 31-year-old rallied from a set down to defeat Chinese Taipei’s Chun-Hsin Tseng 3-6, 6-3, 6-0 after saving eight of nine break points to reach the main draw in Cincinnati. Goffin recently pushed Cameron Norrie to 7-5 in the fifth set in the Wimbledon quarter-finals but lost his opening match of the US Open Series in Washington, D.C. last week to Jack Sock.

Also advancing to the main draw is World No. 56 Jaume Munar, who has successfully qualified for all three American ATP Masters 1000 events (Indian Wells, Miami, Cincinnati) this season after taking down home hope Steve Johnson 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.

For the third straight year, former UCLA standout Marcos Giron advanced to the main draw in Cincinnati after winning a tight battle against Italian Fabio Fognini, 7-6(9), 7-5. Fognini’s countryman, 27-year-old Lorenzo Sonego, breezed by Bradley Klahn 6-2, 6-4 in his second round qualifying match.

Rain halted play around 5:45pm local time (ET) for nearly an hour before matches resumed and will continue this evening. #NextGenATP Italian Lorenzo Musetti will play Serbian Dusan Lajovic.

Probably "one of the worst years" of his career? Probably not anymore.

Pablo Carreno Busta gave that assessment of his 2022 campaign prior to Sunday's Montreal final. The Spaniard supercharged his season by winning his first ATP Masters 1000 title with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 victory against Hubert Hurkacz.

The 31-year-old worked his way into the match by dialling up his aggression and locking in on return to control the last two sets. After being gifted a momentum-shifting break early in the second set, Carreno Busta earned his breakthrough in the third game of set three as he closed in on the biggest win of his career.

Carreno Busta moved up nine places to No. 14 in the Pepperstone ATP Live Rankings this week. He is also up to 11th in the Pepperstone ATP Live Race To Turin, soaring 18 places.

More to follow...

Carlos Alcaraz is ready to embrace the new-found pressure that has been placed upon him as he prepares to make his second appearance at the Western & Southern Open.

The Spaniard came through qualifying in Cincinnati last season, but will compete as the third seed this week. He has already captured four titles this year, including two ATP Masters 1000 triumphs.

“Right now, I take each match as a challenge for me to stay the same as always. I am No. 4 in the world, one of the favourites to win this tournament, so it is a bit tough to handle the pressure,” Alcaraz said in his pre-tournament press conference on Sunday.

“But I am training at my best. I am training with the objective to improve and try to produce the game I produced during the clay season and in Miami. It is a challenge for me to be the same.”

[ATP APP]

Rafael Nadal is excited at the opportunity to return to No. 1 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings over the next month, but believes it will not be an easy journey as he looks to prioritise his health.

The Spaniard will climb to top spot if he wins the Western & Southern Open title and current World No. 1 Daniil Medvedev fails to reach the quarter-finals in Cincinnati.

“It means a lot to me to have that opportunity [to rise to No. 1]. Something that I didn’t expect could happen again. The main thing is to stay healthy and play the events that I want to play,” Nadal said in his pre-tournament press conference on Sunday. “I will not play more than what I believe works well for my body.

“I am going to put all my efforts into every single event I play. It is something that doesn’t matter if I have the chance to be No. 1, but I am happy to be in this position and if it happens, I will be very happy.”

[ATP APP]

Over recent years, Matteo Berrettini, Lorenzo Musetti and Jannik Sinner have been the shining lights of Italian tennis, with the trio capturing 14 tour-level titles between them.

However, if you scratch beneath the surface, you’ll find a plethora of young stars emerging, with eight of the Top 16 players in the Pepperstone ATP Live Race To Milan from Italy, including Musetti and Sinner.

The 21-year-old Francesco Passaro currently sits 10th and holds a 42-18 record on the year, having won his maiden ATP Challenger Tour title in Trieste last month. Guilio Zeppieri is in hot pursuit in 12th, having enjoyed a dream run to his first tour-level semi-final in Umag in July.

Francesco Passaro in action - Photo Credit: Peter Staples/ATP Tour
While both will be looking to make their debuts in Milan, 13th placed Flavio Cobolli is no stranger to the Allianz Cloud, having hit as an alternate at the Intesa Sanpaolo Next Gen ATP Finals last year. The 20-year-old captured his first Challenger Tour crown in Zadar in March and is another exciting prospect for Italian fans to support.

View Pepperstone ATP Live Race To Milan Rankings

Hubert Hurkacz is one of the shyest, most soft-spoken players on the ATP Tour.

You wouldn’t know it by the way 25-year-old from Poland drives. (He was once spotted behind the wheel of a gleaming-yellow McLaren 720S in the Southern California desert, and says if he hadn’t gone into the tennis business he might have pursued a career in auto racing.)

Or the way he serves — a stroke that has fast become one of the loudest, engine-revving weapons on the circuit. As we’ve seen this week at the National Bank Open Presented by Rogers, it’s a shot that has helped him out of many a sticky situation. In fact, all four of the World No. 10 Pole’s victories in Montreal, including his 5-7, 6-3, 6-2 dismissal of fourth seed Casper Ruud in Saturday’s semi-final, have gone the distance, his serve often the difference-maker.

He smacked 23 aces in his opener against Albert Ramos-Vinolas, 16 against Emil Ruusuvuori, 20 against Nick Kyrgios, and another 18 against Ruud, giving him a tournament-leading 77 (and counting) on the week.

Oh, how those free points can come in handy in a pinch.

Daniil Medvedev and Carlos Alcaraz are among those who have made the journey from Montreal to Cincinnati this week as they prepare to compete in the seventh ATP Masters 1000 event of the season at the Western & Southern Open.

Medvedev, who lifted the trophy in 2019, will face stiff competition from two-time Masters 1000 champion Alcaraz and Spaniard Rafael Nadal, who will try to win his 37th Masters 1000 crown in Cincinnati.

Taylor Fritz leads home hopes, while a string of stars will be aiming for deep runs to help boost their Nitto ATP Finals qualification chances.

ATPTour.com looks ahead at 10 things to watch in Cincinnati.

View Schedule | View Singles Draw | View Doubles Draw

Pablo Carreno Busta continued his tear through the Montreal draw on Saturday night with an all-action semi-final victory against Daniel Evans. The Spaniard won a high-quality battle of unseeded upstarts 7-5, 6-7(7), 6-2 to reach his first ATP Masters 1000 final.

The 31-year-old had a match point in the second-set tie-break but saw his perfect set streak on the week snapped at nine before storming back in a dominant final set. After so little separated the competitors for most of the two-hour, 58-minute marathon, Carreno Busta raced through the finish line by winning the final 12 points, including eight on return.

"It was fun for the crowd but for me it was tough," he said of the gripping encounter. "I had a match point in the second set but he served pretty good so I couldn't do anything. When you have a match point and have to play another set, it's always hard to do it.

"Mentally I think I was very good. Probably the beginning of the third set was the hardest part of the match. But after that I thought I had to be more aggressive, try to push a lot, try to go to the net, and it was good."

[ATP APP]

#NextGenATP Italian Lorenzo Musetti began his quest to qualify for the Western & Southern Open by taking down German Daniel Altmaier 6-7(5), 6-4, 6-3 in two-hours, 46 minutes in Saturday’s first-round qualifying match at the Lindner Family Tennis Center.

Musetti, 20, who claimed his first Tour-level title at the ATP 500 event in Hamburg this past month, joined countrymen Fabio Fognini and Lorenzo Sonego to complete an Italian trifecta. Fognini needed a third set tie-break to defeat Soonwoo Kwon 5-7, 6-4, 7-6(3), while Sonego had a comfortable, straight-sets victory over John Millman 7-5, 6-2, earning his first victory on a hard court since the Australian Open.

The Italians will all chase a main-draw birth Sunday as they play back-to-back-to-back on Court seven.

Also part of the star-studded qualifying field is David Goffin, a former finalist in Cincinnati, who needed just 45 minutes today to defeat Frenchman Hugo Gaston, 6-1, 6-0.

Marcos Giron won the all-American contest against Denis Kudla, 6-3, 6-2, joining Steve Johnson and Bradley Klahn as the only Americans remaining in Cincinnati’s qualifying draw.

Hubert Hurkacz continues to hang tough in Montreal.

The eighth seed rallied from losing a see-saw first set to seal a 5-7, 6-3, 6-2 semi-final victory against Casper Ruud at the National Bank Open Presented by Rogers on Saturday, his fourth consecutive three-set victory of the week.

After Ruud impressively recovered a 0-3 deficit to take the opening set, Hurkacz regained his composure to dictate the rest of the proceedings with some aggressive hitting and level the pair’s ATP Head2Head series at 1-1. The Pole’s power from deep brought him regular success against the Ruud delivery, with Hurkacz converting five from eight break points en route to a two-hour, two-minute victory at the ATP Masters 1000 event.

“I was trying to stay in the game,” said Hurkacz after the match when asked about the early pressure he faced on Court Central. “Casper was playing really incredible tennis and he was the better player at the beginning, especially for the first set and a half. I was trying to stay in the game and hold on to compete as good as I can.”

Hurkacz had already battled past Emil Ruusuvuori, Albert Ramos-Vinolas and Nick Kyrgios in matches that went the distance this week in Quebec. Despite the demanding nature of his victories, Hurkacz was confident he would be ready to bring his best for the final, where he will face Pablo Carreno Busta or Daniel Evans.

Third seeds Wesley Koolhof and Neal Skupski clinched a match tie-break for the second consecutive day in Montreal Saturday to advance to their eighth final of the season (5-2). After dropping the first set, Koolhof and Skupski rallied to beat two-time Roland Garros champions Kevin Krawietz and Andreas Mies 3-6, 6-2, 10-8.

Koolhof and Skupski are the top duo in the Pepperstone ATP Live Doubles Teams Rankings. Coming into Montreal, they were on a three-match skid, but the pair has quickly turned it around and will compete for its second ATP Masters 1000 title of the season on Sunday at the National Bank Open Presented by Rogers.

Attempting to capture their sixth title of the year, they will take on either Poland’s Jan Zielinski and Hubert Hurkacz, or Daniel Evans and John Peers. That match is scheduled last in Saturday’s order of play, following Evans’ singles semi-final match against Spaniard Pablo Carreno-Busta.

[NEWSLETTER FORM]

Andy Murray will compete at the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati after moving into the main draw on Saturday.

The former World No. 1 was due to compete in qualifying, but has now taken the unused special exempt spot, which opened up following Jack Draper’s defeat in Montreal on Friday. The Scot will face Swiss star Stan Wawrinka in a popcorn first-round match in Cincinnati.

Murray has a strong record in Ohio, having triumphed at the hard-court ATP Masters 1000 event in 2008 and 2011, before he advanced to the final in 2016. He joins a stacked field in Cincinnati, featuring World No. 1 Daniil Medvedev, Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz.

[NEWSLETTER FORM]

Wesley Koolhof and Neal Skupski will aim to capture a Tour-leading sixth title of the season and strengthen their lead in the Pepperstone ATP Doubles Teams Rankings when they compete at the Western & Southern Open next week.

However, their task won’t be easy in Cincinnati, with the third seeds facing a series of potential testing assignments in a stacked top half. The Dutch-British tandem could face singles star Carlos Alcaraz and Pablo Carreno Busta in their opening match, if the Spaniards can overcome Santiago Gonzalez and Edouard Roger-Vasselin. Carreno Busta won the doubles title with Alex de Minaur in 2020.

Koolhof and Skupski are on a collision course to meet Roland Garros finalists Ivan Dodig and Austin Krajicek in the quarter-finals, while they could face Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury in the semi-finals.

View Doubles Draw

The top seeds, who have six tour-level trophies together, including two ATP Masters 1000 titles, could play Australian Open champs Thanasi Kokkinakis and Nick Kyrgios in a popcorn second-round clash. Kokkinakis and Kyrgios will open against Simone Bolelli and Fabo Fognini.

It took a 20-ace barrage for eighth seed Hubert Hurkacz of Poland to bring white-hot Aussie Nick Kyrgios’ streak to an end, 7-6(4), 6-7(5), 6-1, on Friday at the National Bank Open Presented by Rogers. Beginning with his run to the Wimbledon final, Kyrgios had won 15 of his past 16 matches, including nine straight and the title tilt in Washington.

But the extended match play may have caught up to the 27-year-old in IGA Stadium against Hurkacz, who also got the best of him during a trophy surge earlier this summer in Halle. (Asked if he had a better read on Kyrgios than his ATP counterparts, Hurkacz smiled, “Probably not.”)

The Montreal draw blew wide open for Hurkacz, with five of the top eight seeds, including World No. 1 and defending champ Daniil Medvedev, gone before the quarter-finals. However, the 23-year-old Pole isn’t at all surprised by the shakeup.

“The level is so close now between the guys ranked from Top 10 to Top 40, so it maybe looks on paper like some of the guys are below, but the level is really incredible,” said the 25-year-old, through to an ATP Masters 1000 semi-final for the fourth time. “Every single match is fifty-fifty.”

Hurkacz’s semi-final opponent is the highest seed still standing, Casper Ruud of Norway, who is up to No. 5 in the Pepperstone ATP Live Rankings and poised to reach a career-high No. 4 should he win Saturday.