It was just that sort of tournament that caused me to break out from my vacation in Slovenia to take a day trip to Italy and Cordenons, which is located about 90 kilometres north of Venice. I made the trip on the second day of the Zucchetti Kos Tennis Cup, which is a $100,000+H tournament. The “+H” is an important if mystifying bit of tour jargon; it indicates that the tournament will pay the hotel and the facility costs for the week, so even if you’re a first round casualty, bed and board is yours for the duration.
Only a few matches were played on Day One, a Monday, so the schedule was packed for Tuesday. The tournament referee kindly explained that this was because many players also perform in the lucrative German tennis league matches (they’re basically club matches, with the various private clubs hiring top pros to represent them, mostly for prestige value) at that time of year. The league matches are mostly on Sundays, hence a flood of requests for a Tuesday start in the Challenger event – Mondays are travel days for the itinerant pros.
The sponsors and the Italian Tennis Federation foot the bill for the week of the Challenger, and to my surprise I wasn’t asked to pay a cent ( or Euro ) to watch the matches. The top seed was Potito Starace (ranked no. 60 ), playing his last event before flying off to take part in the Beijing Olympic Games. The second seed was the defending champ, Argentina’s Maximo Gonzalez.
First up, though, was Daniel Gimeno, who was just outside the top 100 at the time, playing against an Italian wild card, Gianluca Naso. They went toe-to-toe, but at business end of the set (four-games all) Naso blinked, Gimeno stole a break, and he served out, 6-4. Gimeno knew he had his man, and the heat went out of the match as he comfortably ran through the second set 6-3.
Meanwhile out in the boonies former top 50 player Alberto Martin was battling the rust that had corroded his game. He wasn't helped by the fact that his opponent, Thiago Alves, serves swerved so effectively that they took the ball and Martin's racket (with Martin still attached) into a fence that’s just a little to close to the court for players of this level. After conceding the set 6-4, Martin appeared to lose interest and collapsed, 6-1 in the second.
One of the interesting features of a challenger is the mix of players. There are former top-tier players who are recovering from injury or a loss of form, regular challenger players who are tough competitorsw but doomed by shortcomings to spend their careers at this level, and unknowns who are on an express track to the elite, top 100 level.
The next match on center court was the match of the day. Maximo Gonzalez - short, stocky, and every inch the muscular clay-courter – was paired with tall, blond Diego Hartfield, who hails from Argentina but whose surname and build suggest Nordic ancestry. It proved to be a dramatic battle that swayed one way, then another, before an outrageous drop shot in the tiebreaker gave the set to Hartfield. In the second set, the much more highly-ranked Gonzalez appeared to re-establish the order, winning it 6-3. But Hartfield pulled out some terrific shots to triumph 6-3 in the third - after over two hours of absorbing play. Why isn’t this man in the top 100?, I wondered, and had my own question answered when Hartfield was beaten in the next round.
The day had started on center with a few as 30 to 40 fans bearing up under the heat. But a late afternoon crowd, presumably fresh from work, turned up for the matches featuring Starace and Filippo Volandri, and by evening as many as 300 people were on site. Volandri started badly - perhaps winning the previous week had taken it out of him. His opponent, Lukas Rosol, jumped to a 5-2 lead, but Volandri battled back to take the tiebreaker. Rosol just couldn't cope with the way Volandri used his exquisitely timed backhand (and they were a joy to behold) to push him wider and wider, until the killer shot was administered. In the second set, Volandri continued to weave a magical array of shots, and he closed it out, 6-3 .
