OK, folks. I’ll bring you this week’s W.A.T.C.H. List, but I must warn you: it’s abysmal.
Since the rankings this week are based solely upon five Futures tournaments, there are very few players achieving their career highs via on-court achievements. Thus, over half of this week’s table find themselves backing into their personal bests because adjacent players on the ATP Rankings table are a bunch of point-losers:
Player | NATIONALITY | Age | New High | Why |
Germain Gigounon | BEL | 24 | 237 | others lost points |
Jose Checa-Calvo | ESP | 28 | 239 | others lost points |
Borna Coric | CRO | 17 | 303 | Turkey F51 W |
Alexey Vatutin | RUS | 21 | 385 | others lost points |
Ivan Arenas-Gualda | ESP | 23 | 389 | others lost points |
Tihomir Grozdanov | BUL | 26 | 394 | Qatar F5 R2 |
Ricardo Urzua-Rivera | CHI | 24 | 414 | Chile F12 SF |
Tomas Lipovsek Puches | ARG | 20 | 415 | Chile F12 QF |
Yoshihito Nishioka | JPN | 18 | 442 | Chile F12 W |
Facundo Mena | ARG | 21 | 492 | Brazil F21 QF |
Martin Cuevas | URU | 21 | 522 | others lost points |
Pedro Cachin | ARG | 18 | 544 | others lost points |
Tim Nekic | GER | 21 | 574 | others lost points |
Jean-Marc Werner | GER | 23 | 576 | others lost points |
Mateo Nicolas Martinez | ARG | 19 | 579 | others lost points |
Jaime Pulgar-Garcia | ESP | 24 | 581 | others lost points |
Mike Urbanija | SLO | 24 | 590 | others lost points |
Tristan Lamasine | FRA | 20 | 600 | Turkey F50 QF |
Vadim Alekseenko | UKR | 30 | 609 | Turkey F51 R2 |
Caio Silva | BRA | 22 | 615 | Brazil F21 SF |
Alban Meuffels | NED | 21 | 616 | Turkey F50 SF |
Boo.
Leading the charge of those who actually did things on court is the boundlessly active Borna Coric, who won the year’s final pro event in Turkey. This must’ve come as quite a relief to Borna’s practice partner of last week, Rafael Nadal, as a Coric loss the week after would’ve reflected quite poorly on him, no doubt*.
By now, you know all about the 17-year-old Croatian sensation, and I’m really only mentioning him so I can include this picture:

Hot Lava – The Lion Cub In A Tiger Suit
The US Open Boys champ finishes 2013 with five Futures titles and a decent 39/12 record on the pro tour.
Next up on our hit parade is Ricardo Urzua-Rivera, whose semi-final showing at the Chile F12 Futures finds the former ITF Junior Top Tenner at No. 414 in this week’s rankings. The injury-plagued 24-year-old finishes a successful 66/25 year in which he played as many matches (91) as he had in the previous 2.5 seasons combined.
As a result, he’s up about 600 ranking rungs, after beginning the year outside the Top 1000.
And, since I’m completely uninspired, that’s gonna wrap up this year’s W.A.T.C.H. Lists. Next week/year will feature actual on-court achievements from this week’s/next year’s two Challenger events in Noumea and Sao Paulo. Or something. How exciting!
So be safe, everyone, and let’s do this again in 2014!
*can’t seem to find the sarcasm font here.