Results: Sao Paulo and Noumea Challengers

Match reports up later, for now the results:

Sao Paulo

[Q] Rafael Camilo defeated Adrian Menendez-Maceiras 5-7 7-6 7-5 (saved a match point in the TB!)

[1] Ricardo Mello leads [7] Federico Delbonis 6-4 5-7 *5-4 (play suspended: rain!)

 

Noumea

  

Semifinals

 

[3] Gilles Muller defeated Augustin Gensse (FRA) 6-3 6-4
Vincent Millot defeated [2] Jesse Huta Galung, walkover

 

Final

 

Vincent Millot defeated [3] Gilles Muller 7-6 2-6 6-4

 

Update on lack of further updates: Unfortunately, I’m not going to have the time to do a proper write-up up of these matches; I’m packing up to head down to Florida and cover the first four Futures events there.  In the meantime, caioswim has done an amazing job of covering the Sao Paulo tournament all week with his Youtube videos. Here’s a nice little chunk of the Camilo v Menendez match. It’s a good illustration of the weaponry Camilo has at his disposal, as well as the work he still needs to do to improve his consistency and fitness (note: he’s in the far court):

 

 

I have to say, I’m really starting to love this kid and his game.  And his breakout success in this event has not only been the story of the tournament (he’s now won 3 matches having saved match points), but further underlines how insane the tournament organizers were to put his epic match against Horacio Zeballos on an outside court, when the main court was available.  I’m still trying to get over that one.  Even his doubles final (he and Santiago Gonzalez are the top seeds and beat third seeds James Cerretani/Adil Shamasdin 6-4 6-7(6) 10-5 in the semis) won’t be on Court Central.  The tournament director must hate him. (kidding)

 

Anyway, here are the final points of the Camilo-Menendez contest:

 

 

It’s a shame we don’t have someone like caioswim in Noumea, but here are some pretty sweet pictures of Millot’s championship victory over Muller.  It was the 24-year-old Frenchman’s first Challenger Tour title (and his first final since June of 2009).  Second seeds  Freddie Nielsen and Dominik Meffert took the dubs trophy 7-6(4) 5-7 10-5 over top-seeded Flavio Cipolla and Simone Vagnozzi).

 

Regarding Jesse Huta Galung’s withdrawal: apparently playing the semifinals would be too much of a pain in the butt.  Didn’t want to take any chances with Australian Open qualifying so soon on the horizon.  Speaking of which, we’ll be providing full coverage of the qualifying tournament down under, with a very special guest author/editor on board.  Who could it be? Hint: it’s someone who writes much better then I do.  (Yes, I know: that doesn’t narrow down the field too much, haha.)

Sao Paulo Challenger Semifinal Preview

It’s Saturday at the Sao Paulo Challenger, and somehow we are mostly on schedule in this rain-plagued tournament. How about that? As such, there will be two semifinals today. As opposed to, say, four.

The first contest is the decidedly non-marquee matchup between 20-year-old Brazilian qualifier Rafael Camilo and heretofore (and possibly still) anonymous 25-year-old Spaniard Adrian Menendez-Maceiras. But just because this is the semi with the lesser known (if known at all) names in it doesn’t mean this is an insignificant match. Quite the contrary, in fact.

As this is a $100,000 event (near the cream of the crop for the Challenger Tour), to say that this first meeting between the two unseeded semifinalists is a big opportunity would be a huge understatement. Nevermind the extra $3,460 the winner of this match can add to the $5,020 he’s already won this week (although they probably mind it very much); a finalist’s points at this event would see Camilo’s ranking jump from #448 to around #306 (his career high was #433 about a month ago), or send Menendez from #283 to around #238 (his career high was #174 in May of 2008).  Suffice it to say: a lot on the line.  Don’t even need Hawkeye to make that call.

If you’ll recall, Camilo was the guy who withstood second seed Horacio Zeballos’ 21 aces and 2 match points in the 2^nd round.  I got to see him in yesterday’s 6-4 6-2 quarterfinal drubbing of Thomas Fabbiano, and I was suitably impressed. Camilo’s got game, y’all.  He’s also got a good bit of a gut (and not the Roberto Busto kind) too. So gutty is he, in fact, his shirt was riding up over the top of it at various intervals during his match.

Bust A Gut

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, he also possesses a very substantial weight of shot; large-and-in-charge serve, hefty forehand, and a backhand that looks shockingly like Robin Soderling’s (if not in quality than certainly in trajectory). I haven’t had a chance to see Menendez play this week (or ever), so I’ll just run with that ignorance and blissfully predict Camilo will score the upset here. After all, the guy’s already 6-0 on the year and has beaten two players even more highly ranked than Menendez-Maceiras this week. And if he wins this match, maybe they’ll even spell his name right during the post-match interview.

Sao Paulo Challenger Quarterfinal Results

The final match has just been completed, and here are your Sao Paulo Challenger quarterfinal results:

[1] Ricardo Mello d Juan-Pablo Brzezicki 6-2 6-0

[7] Federico Delbonis d [3] Joao Souza 7-6(5) 5-7 6-4

Adrian Menendez-Maceiras d Uladzimir Ignatik 7-6(5) 7-6(1)

[Q] Rafael Camilo d Thomas Fabbiano 6-4 6-4

Save for Ignatik v Menendez, which was not streamed, I was able to watch all of the above matches and will be back with full recaps (and smashingly illustrative screencaps) later on today.

The Delbo-Souza match was… interesting…

Stay tuned!

Sao Paulo Challenger Quarterfinals Preview!

Good (time-appropriate greeting) everyone! So, I have a question: are you as sick of reading these damn Sao Paulo previews as I am of writing them? Let’s just say, for the sake of this article, that you aren’t. Is that OK? Will that work for you? From my end, well…my Sao Paulo Bureau Chief is on the lam, he’s in the wind, and – worst of all – he doesn’t even exist. So you’ll have to settle for my last-minute cobbled-together preview instead. Here are today’s Bradesco Prime Cup Sao Paulo Challenger quarterfinal match-ups:

[7] Federico Delbonis vs. [3] Joao Souza – The two have met once previously, with Delbo winning 7-6(8) 6-2 on clay at the Braunschweig Challenger in June of 2009. In other news, I love prepositional phrase strings! And brown is my favourite-coloured schweig. Just in case you planned on rewarding my reluctant, previewing diligence with the gift of schweig.

J-Wow is the higher seed and the higher ranked (#111 to #160) and the 22 year-old Brazilian will also have the home crowd in his favour. Therefore I pick Delbonis to win in two tough sets.

[1] Ricardo Mello vs. Juan-Pablo Brzezicki – Wow. This match is really the immoveable object meets the irresistible force. Allow me to explain: Brzezicki, the 28 year-old Argentine, has a 3-1 head-to-head edge over the top seed (although they haven’t met since 2008, but Juan-Pablo’s won the last three in any case); but the 30 year-old Brazilian has never lost at this event – hell, he just lost his first set yesterday to Tsung-Hua Yang – and he’s looked good in the two matches I’ve seen him play here. I think Mello gets off the snide here and advances to the semis in straights.

Sao Paolo Challenger – My So-Called Thursday Wrap-Up

All right, my friends. You all are gonna hafta earn your Thursday Sao Paolo Challenger recap today.  How?  Well, I’m about to get insanely autobiographical, and you’ll have to wade through terrifying glimpses into my mania in order to pick out snippets of tennistical insight and actuality. Why? Because I like you!

Anyway, take a look at this:

click to enlarge

What is this? This, my friends, is my so-called life. An actual screenshot of how my computer looked a few hours ago, as I stretched into hour *mumble* of Deadly-Sinworthy tennis watching. In the upper right is the heart of the operation, the tennis stream, usually pirated off of livescorehunter.com, although I pay for tennistv.com as well (don’t ask me why). This is where the tennis viewing takes place, primarily. A lot of the time, the streams I watch aren’t even as glamorous-looking as the one above (Lapentti-misspellings, horrible font and all). They’re usually smaller and blurrier. And still I watch. Very still, ’cause I’m afraid any slight movement will cause me to lose the feed (kidding) (mostly).

In the bottom-right corner is the control panel of the operation, the “live” scoreboard (though it’s often frozen). There’s another one I have open behind the one in the picture above, which I control-tab over to so I can keep (controlled) tabs on the action in Auckland, Brisbane, Chennai and Doha (it’s as easy as A,B, C) (and D).

The left portion of the screen contains the context, the brain, the additional info that adds substance to what I’m seeing. In this case, it’s a Google-translated (per)version of a just-completed article about a just-completed tenis match (that’s Spanish for “tennis match”). This week, these translations are from Portuguese, and are quite necessary since a) I don’t speak Portuguese and 2) no English media outlet gives a rat’s ass about the kind of tournaments I follow (Challengers and Futures, keep up). I’m using the idiomatic “rat’s ass” phrase on purpose, by the way, in case you’re also reading this on Google-translate, as I’m sure its translation into another language will be titter-inducting.

Often, these articles come with the added hindrance/hilarity of mangled translations, so really, who even knows if the info I give you is correct most of the time? For instance, the one open in the above screenshot has the headline “Delbonis expects tough game in front of beans in SP 4As Open” – I shit you not. Will he really play in front of beans tomorrow?  I have no idea.  Another article I’ll read as background for today’s matches is entitled, “Mello is choking, but eliminates talented pupil of Larri Passos.” Now, I don’t know if this is a crazy translation error, or if the press in Sao Paolo is just refreshingly candid and no-holds-barred. You’ll have to judge for yourself.

Anyway, this is what I go through to produce the kind of high-quality, well-informed, and thoughtful (haha) pieces you read here. The things I do for you people. The things I do for (thirty) love. You’re welcome.