Spotlight on: Dimitar Kutrovsky

Since this site is, theoretically, all about trying to introduce you to the pros you may not know (yet), I’m really pleased to be able to bring you a profile and interview with the player who, for me, stood out the most on the Florida Futures swing throughout all of January:

Dimitar Kutrovsky is 23 years old and currently ranked #565. Though he hasn’t played a full year of pro ball to get his ranking up to where it belongs, he’s the Bulgarian #3 player; and when the new rankings are released on Monday, he’ll be within 10 spots of the #2 position in his home country, behind only Grigor Dimitrov. A three-time ITA singles All-American, and one-time doubles All-American with Josh Zavala, “The Bulgarian Nightmare” – as he is now monikered – finished his college career as the winningest player in University of Texas history.

“Tar” (as doubles partner Jack Sock refers to him, among other names), plays a game that is veritably one-of-a-kind on the pro tour: primarily two-handed off both sides (though he can hit one-handed off either), his compact, versatile and all-court style of play packs a surprising punch for someone listed at 5′ 9” and 152 pounds.

(photo courtesy of The Austin Tennis Blog)

I first saw him play at the USA F3 in Weston, and his game caught my eye even though he was losing convincingly to Dennis Zivkovic at the time. Of course, that was the first of about three consecutive amazing comeback victories for the man from Sofia, Bulgaria, which also showed me that you can never count him out. As I said to coach Mike Wolf on the final weekend of the USA F4, every time I watch Dimi play, he shows me something more: ability, variety, intensity, strategy, heart – it’s all there. Mike further confirmed my suspicions by telling me that Kutrovsky goes about things the right way, with the right attitude, and thus sets himself up for success.

On a cloudy day last Friday, I was able to drag Kutrovsky away from supporting his friend and dubs teammate (in the third set, no less), telling him (only half-jokingly) that Jack’s already gotten enough press from my site, and it’s about time he got his own turn in the spotlight. I wanted to be able to know more about the personality of the player whose game I’d come to so admire. Happily, he not only agreed to abandon his friend in his time of need (haha), but he turned out to be a friendly, funny guy as well. Bonus. Here’s what he had to say:

Challenger Tennis: All right. First and foremost: “The Bulgarian Nightmare” – are you happy with this nickname?

Kutrovsky: Yeah. Yeah. Seems fitting. I like it.

Challenger Tennis: What makes you a “nightmare”, would you say?

Kutrovsky: The whole idea behind it was that I want to play in a way that when people see my name in the draw, they’re like, “Oh, I don’t want to play this guy.” So I’m kind of trying to work my way to actually make that happen.

Challenger Tennis: Aha. So, now you’re the Bulgarian #3 – have you heard from Davis Cup at all?

Kutrovsky: I’m actually going in two weeks. (Delinquent interviewer’s note: now it’s more like one week, as this conversation happened about a week ago. You might wanna check my math on that, though.) I’m going to go do the camp and then we’re going to go play against Belarus, so hopefully I can play. I know the guys that are in front of me. I think it’s going to be me and this other guy, if things go well. That’s the plan, hopefully. Hopefully I do well in the camp and show them I’m worthy of playing.

Challenger Tennis: Grigor is definitely playing?

Challenger Tennis Players To Watch – Part Ten(nis)

As we get this late into the Challenger Tennis 12 Days of Christmas profile season (I have actual tournaments I need to start profiling soon, people), one thing is becoming clear: the order in which I hit up the remaining players on my list is becoming increasingly determined by those for whom I can find videos. Therefore, goodbye to today’s planned [redacted] and [redacted] profiles (hint: a Venezuelan and a Pole), hello Pablo Carreno-Busta!

2011 Challenger Tennis Players To Watch – The Nueve Legion

Late last year, as I was assembling my 2010 Players to Watch list, I came across the name Evgeny Donskoy on the stevegtennis.com Young Guns spreadsheet, alongside names like Grigor Dimitrov and Henri Kontinen, so I had to check him out. But the Donskey Boy hadn’t had the greatest of years, which is maybe why he could only manage a half-smile in all of his old photos.

Though he started off 2009 ranked #514 and even reached a career high 384th on the 9th of November, by the end of the year he had only been able to gain nine meager rankings spots over his position at the start of it, finishing #505 in the world. 

But this year, I feel like Donskoy’s time might finally have come. The former Top 20 junior in the world turned in a high-quality 41/24 2010 campaign, including a run to the semifinals of the Ortobello Challenger in which he beat Robin Haase, Andreas Haider-Maurer and Federico Del Bonis along the way. As a result, his cut his ranking nearly in half, from #505 to #259 in the ATP list, up 246 spots.  The power baseliner has a big serve that is often clutch and gets him out of trouble, but is also sometimes wayward and gets him into trouble. Oh, tennis.

Perhaps his most well-known run this year happened at the St. Petersburg Open, where he made it through qualifying and then beat Day One Player To Watch Andrey Kuznetsov in a close 7-5 7-6(2) contest.

He faced off against Mikhail Youzhny in R2, and… well, let’s go to the video now!

Actually, before I summon the A/V nerds, I just wanna say that one of the more difficult things about profiling up-and-coming players on the Challenger Tour is finding actual videos in which they’re featured. And even when you find them, they’re not ideal. Such is the case for Evgeny Donskoy. You’ll have to stick around to the end of this St. Petersburg highlight vid from two months ago, but then you’ll get to see a couple of Donskoy points. In the interim, I hope might just be entertained by Benny Becker highlights/interview and a funny Dmitry Tursunov misspelling that actually comes closer to what I feel his name really should be. Roll it!

I remember watching this match, and – if you’ll recall (or even if you don’t) – the youngster gave Misha all he could handle in the early going, taking the first set 6-3 before going down 3-6 2-6 in the next two. After that match, Mikhail was all impressed, saying in an article with Eurosport Russia that Donskoy was one of the most promising young Russian players. “Somehow, if a person is not included in the 20 years of age among the 50 or 100 strongest tennis players in the world, we all immediately think he’s weak level,” saluted the elder Russian. “Evgeny has proven to be a very good player, and in the future he’ll add.”

Though I can’t embed it, the bottom of this article has a nice little video newscast featuring Tursunov-Lu and Youzhny-Donskoy match highlights followed by interviews with Dima and the Youzhual Suspect (of course, the real highlight is the Google-translated headline). But you get to see a couple of different Donskoy points in that one.

You can also watch an entire Donskoy vs. Starace match from the previous year here, if you’d like:

2011 Challenger Tennis Players To Watch: Ocho-ly Night

As in “O Holy Night” – ’cause this is the 8th part of my 12 Days of Christmas series (and the players I’m profiling today speak Spanish), geddit?  Yeah – I’m not so thrilled with that joke either.  Let’s move on…

So, on this eighth day of Challenger Tennis Christmas, I have to say: I am the luckiest SOB on the planet. Why is that, you may wonder (if you’re the wondering sort)? Well, it’s because the two players who have been on my 2011 Players to Watch list/radar happen to be featured together in the most spectacular video I’ve featured to date. If you do nothing else today, I beseech you to skip my stupid words and pictures (if you must) and go directly to the “Javier Marti – Andrea Collarini final match in Palafrugell” vid at the end of this article and, of course, watch it. If I do nothing else with this article other than getting you to watch that video, then it’s been a success.

Anyway, as you may have guessed – if you’re the deductive type – today’s 2011 Players to Watch are Javier Marti and Andrea Collarini. We’ll start with Javier. The 18 year-old from Spain made an early name for himself by winning the European Championships (U12) at age 11.   As with the course of many a Spanish prodigy, he largely left juniors behind in his mid-teens (he had always played up a level in juniors anyway), posting two quarterfinal and one semifinal showing in 2008 and finishing the year ranked #847 at age 16.

He started 2009 a rickety 9/15 but had twice the success in the second half of his season, going 18/15 to finish at 27/30 for the year. This year, Marti overcame an 0-5 start to his 2010 campaign to win his first pro tournament at the Bulgaria F3 Futures event in May.

But he didn’t stop there; the speedy-wiry Spaniard with the liquid backhand went on to take titles in Romania and Portugal as well, finishing at a 54/28 pace, gaining 350 spots on the ATP ladder and slicing his ranking in (more than) half, from #685 to #335. He’s now the fifth-youngest player in the Top 400, behind Bernard Tomic, yesterday’s profilee Facundo Arguello, Ryan Harrison and Filip Krajinovic.

Though he didn’t have much success at the Challenger level, going 6/9 on the year, he did post wins over Sam Groth and Alex Ward, and I strongly suspect that his results will only continue to improve has he fills out and gets stronger. According to his coach, Oscar Burrieza, there’s a lot he can do to get better mentally as well. I’ll have the opportunity to see him play in a few weeks, as he’s on the entry list for the USA F2 Futures in Tamarac, FL. I’m very much looking forward to my first chance to see him play in person.

OK, I got some vids for ya. This first one, which I trust you skipped right to (per my instructions), is of Collarini and Marti facing off in a U16 battle in Palafrugell Spain. I won’t spoil the outcome for you – you’ll just have to watch and see. What I will say, is that – with its hilariously epic music and descriptive documentation – I hope and expect this holcombBrook masterpiece to one day be looked back upon as a vital document of two talents who have since made it big. Their games may have changed a bit since then, but this vid provides terrific audiovisual insight into the sometimes awkward and hard-to-read lefty game of Collarini, as well as the tremendous racquet head speed of the Marti forehand and his comparatively compact and smooth swing off the backhand side. Great stuff!

I kinda dig this next vid for its practically subterranean vantage point – cool setting, too. I also like that Marti looks to attack, and is not just content to slug it out from the baseline. This is pretty recent footage, taken from a 6-4 5-7 6-3 win over Alessandro Gianessi (himself a former Top 40 junior) at the Spain F33 in September:

(p.s. watching parts 2 & 3 is recommended as well – there’s even some S & V in part 3!)

And lastly, but not Jason Priestley… you’re not going to learn a whole lot from this next video, but I’m including it for the following reasons: 1) the soundtrack, in a word, rules, b) Morgan Phillips is in it, and iii) Marti is having none of the net hug at the end. All of which makes it a pretty entertaining selection, to my eyes and ears:

That footage is from the final of Spain’s F34, by the way. Which took place just after the Spain F33 footage was taken, I’ll point out in case you’re quite dense.

2011 Challenger Tennis Players To Watch – Parte Siete

[Angry author's note: I had this article written and set to upload 7 hours ago, but then this damned blizzard we're having blew out my cable and internet so I couldn't post it. Now it looks like I missed Day 7 of my 12 Days of Christmas, but I didn't miss it!  I was ready, I swear! Anyway, I'll have another set of profiles up later today. Weather permitting, of course.]

Probably the most daunting challenge I encountered when assembling this year’s Watch list was figuring out which of the Argentinians to include. Or – more to the point – which ones not to include. So many Argies, so little time; how do I choose just one? (One was my arbitrary limit, based on absolutely nothing at all.)

It’s hard to limit it to just ten, for that matter. I know it’s a Captain Obvious kind of thing to say, but it’s just staggering how many quality clay court grinders are churned out by Argentina’s player-producing machinery. Federico Del Bonis, Facundo Bagnis, Guido Pella, Facundo Arguello, Diego Schwartzman, Marco Trungelliti, Nicolas Pastor, Agustin Velotti, Renzo Olivo, and on and on. Every single one of them under 21 years of age and heading for the Top 200 (if they’re not there already).

And they’ve all beaten up on one another at some point, so it’s nearly impossible to pick out the Alpha Argie among them, for the most part (surprising fact, though: it’s Marco Trungelliti who has by far the best W/L record vs. the others from the above-listed group – an impressive 11/2. This fact becomes less surprising when you realize he’s also the oldest in that group, sometimes by over two years, and has spent a good deal of time puttin’ a whoopin’ on the young ‘uns. Let’s check back in on those H2H’s a few years down the road and see how that record’s held up, eh?)

You know what would be absolutely amazing? I’ll tell you: if there were a Tennis Australia-style, livestreamed wildcard playoff for Argentina’s nueva legion, competing in a round robin tournament (not the single elimination draw TA did this year) for a spot in the French Open. I would pay good money to see that happen.

Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, the Delbo would get into the French main draw directly via ranking (it could happen) (plus we gotta make some Delbo room in my hypothetical scenario) and you threw the other 8 into a two-group round-robin tourney. Who do you think would be the eventual WC winner? Answer me that, Argiephiles!

Anyway, back to the problem at hand. Which to choose? Heck, it’s difficult to limit myself to just one Facundo – never mind one Argie. (And on that count, I’m tempted to pick Facundo Mena just ’cause he has a ridiculously wristy forehand like mine, but he’s not even in the Top Thousand yet, so that will have to wait.)

It would also be tempting to just be lazy and pick one of the highest ranked among them – Del Bonis, at #160 and Bagnis (#242) lead the way in that category – but closer inspection reveals that the three players who began the year ranked the highest among the young guns (Guido Pella being the third) (and all three lefties, by the way) arguably struggled more than anyone this year.

Sure, Delbo won the Rome-2 Challenger, and was a finalist at Napoli and Rimini (Italy must be full of tailors, as it really suited him), but he just went 34/27 on the year and only picked up an additional 35 ranking spots. Certainly not the kind of breakout year I was expecting from him.

Federico Del Bonis

Pella’s year was borderline disastrous, as he dropped over 100 places in the rankings on the heels of a 26/22 year.

 

Guido Pella

Of the three, Bagnis was the most successful, but that’s damning with faint praise, to be honest.  Thanks to a season-ending win at the Brazil F36 Futures, Bagnis ended his season on a high note, and his 5 straight wins to take the title pushed his 2010 W/L record to a far more decent-looking 37/29. But apart from a run to the finals at the Bytom Challenger, during which he scored victories against Martin Klizan, Marius Copil and Matthias Bachinger before succumbing to Pere Riba, even Facu didn’t really do as much as I had anticipated from him.

Facundo Bagnis

I have to say, I was kind of fascinated by Marco Trungelliti’s year; he’s really come on strong, and out of relative obscurity. The almost-21-year-old “veteran” of this crew had no junior success to speak of (his ranking high was #630), but he finished this year at a brisk 16/5 pace, which certainly caught my attention. That said, his 35/18 season only amounted to a gain of 45 spots in the rankings, up to #429 from #474. I remain unconvinced, but I’ll be keeping my eye on him for sure.

So that left me with five from which to pick: Arguello, Schwartzman, Velotti, Olivo, and Pastor – all of them under 20 years old, the youngest of the young guns. Olivo, at 18 years old (and 9 months), gained the second-most ranking ground this year, racing up to #618 from a starting point of #1,125. A former #8 junior (and by “former”, I mean April of this year), he won the Bolivia F4 futures in addition to his QF Boys showings at Roland Garros and Wimbledon. But he’s still a year or so off, I think, from my being able to tout him as a Player to Watch.

Renzo Olivo and El Mago Guillermo Coria

Pastor – who’s coached by Javier Nalbandian, brother of a certain someone you might have heard of (hint: his name rhymes with “Shmavid”) – and Schwartzman have very similar resumes, both for this year and for their careers. The 18 year olds largely eschewed the junior tourneys and have focused on the pros; both made the finals of three Futures events this year and gained a lot of ground in 2010. But, as with Olivo, I feel they’re just a bit too raw for me to feel comfortable putting my 2011 PTW betting chips on their names.

Diego Schwartzman