Final curse defeated! First professional title!

Feb 9, 2023

Last Saturday at the Challenger 100 in Koblenz, Fabian Fallert and I were finally able to win our first professional title together. Fabian has already won 2 Challengers, for me it was the first title on the ATP Challenger Tour. I was previously able to win 3 ITF Futures, 2021: 2 with my teammate from Bad Vilbel Niklas Schell in Überlingen and Plaisir. These were crucial to me sticking with tennis and not ending my career prematurely.

And in 2019 I won my first Claremont title in California with my former classmate Milen Ianakiev. That was a personal highlight, Milen and I shared a small room together in the student dormitory for a year and had many other formative tennis experiences together at the university. The ITF Futures are the lowest category of professional tournaments; world ranking points are also awarded here.

Last year (2022) I reached 5 finals on the Challenger Tour (3 of them with Fabian), unfortunately every one of them was lost. The loss of the final in Ismaning was particularly frustrating. Fabian and I weren't even broken in the 67 67 against Patrik Salminen/Michael Geerts and couldn't crown the strong week of play in front of our home crowd with a title. After the bitter final defeats in 2022, the victory in Koblenz had a very special atmosphere. Winning the first professional title at the largest indoor tournament in Germany is the greatest success of my professional career to date.