August Recap

“The highs are high the lows are low.” This sentence stuck with me when I watched the Connor McGregor documentary on Netflix a few months ago. And it applies perfectly to the last few weeks of my tennis season. After the broken thumb, I continued playing in the Bundesliga, but I initially gave up playing in tournaments. That meant no points for the world rankings. It wasn't until the Challenger 50 in Augsburg in mid/late August that I was able to attack again with Constantin Frantzen. As favorites and local heroes, the Challenger was in Constantin's home club, we had a certain pressure to perform. We made it to the semi-finals with two very narrow wins and were then able to win the tournament with two 2-set wins. In the quarterfinals we were already 2-1 behind in the match tiebreak, but were still able to turn the game around. That gave me a boost and gave me important match practice again after the tournament break. The 6 ATP points and the title were good, especially because I hadn't collected any points for almost 50 months. After narrow defeats in July and my break, the momentum was now back on our side.

New week, new luck in Como, here we were able to win the next Challenger without even losing serve. Our first joint back to back title, another milestone. In addition to the course, the week in Como was also wonderful, the facility was right on Lake Como, probably the most beautiful stop on the Challenger Tour.

The original plan was to start the hard court season early, but after the successes on clay we will play a few more tournaments on the red clay. This week we continue in Genoa, at the Challenger 125. Constantin and I are now both ranked between 80 and 90 in the world, the end of the year goal is to qualify together for the Australian Open. For this we need a few more achievements, more on that in the next recap.

With sporty greetings

Hendrik