June 23, 1973: Bracket Challenge

South Africa’s Bernard Mitton, who lost in the first round of qualifying but got into Wimbledon anyway

What do you do when 80-some players pull out of your 128-man draw? It wasn’t exactly an option to skip Wimbledon or proceed with a compressed field, just because an upstart players’ union full of money-grubbing Americans wanted to make a point.

Referee Mike Gibson began by sending out a few invitations. 30-year-old New Yorker Herb Fitzgibbon was semi-retired, working as a stockbroker. Perhaps because he had beaten Niki Pilić at the Championships in 1968, Fitzgibbon got a wire telling him he didn’t need to qualify. He left his desk and headed to London.

When the withdrawals started rolling in, the qualifying tournament was underway. It quickly became clear that the 128-strong group of aspirants didn’t need to be whittled down as much as usual. The third qualifying round was never played: There would be 32 qualifiers instead of the traditional 16.

So many ATP members took their names out of the running that soon, every man who had reached the second round of qualifying was in. Even that wasn’t enough, especially when some of the lucky losers decided to back the boycott. Sherwood Stewart was one such prominent case. Stewart’s doubles partner Dick Dell was another. Dell’s older brother, Donald, was one of the ATP’s founders. As soon as Bob Maud found out he got a second-chance entry into the main draw, union representatives tracked him down and convinced him to stay out.

Ultimately, there were 49 lucky losers in the men’s draw, some of whom had failed to win a single qualifying match. That left former British Davis Cupper Paul Hutchins with a painful what-if to contemplate. Like Fitzgibbon, he was semi-retired with a day job. He entered the qualifying event, but on the first day of play, he was busy at work. He figured he didn’t have much of a chance anyway, so he called in to scratch. A few days later, he learned that had he simply shown up and lost, he could have gotten a place in the main draw.

Hutchins might have made way for Californian Dick Bohrnstedt, the luckiest loser of all. A successful qualifier in 1972, Bohrnstedt wasn’t in the draw for the 1973 preliminaries because his entry got lost. He made it in as an alternate only to lose to Australian John Bartlett in his opening match. He was given a main-draw spot anyway.

British pundits put on a brave face. “I dare say the normal excitement and tension will be far from lacking,” wrote the estimable Lance Tingay. “[A]fter all, the competitors who came in from the qualifying rounds are far from poor players.”

Some of them, anyway. 18-year-old South African Bernard Mitton was another loser in first-round qualifying. He took advantage of his good fortune–and a draw packed with journeymen–to reach the second week of the main draw. He wasn’t even the only lucky loser in the fourth round.

The real hope for the men’s tournament rested with the few stars who chose to play. ATP member Ilie Năstase defied the boycott on the orders of his national federation. When defending champion Stan Smith withdrew, Năstase became the top seed and an overwhelming favorite to win the title. Non-union youngsters Jimmy Connors and Björn Borg were moved onto the seeding list, at 5th and 6th, respectively.

The home fans would follow another ATPer, Britain’s own Roger Taylor. While union members debated whether Taylor would be shunned or merely held at arm’s length for breaking the boycott, the left-hander came within a whisker of winning the title at Queen’s Club. On June 23rd, he lost to Năstase, 9-8, 6-3, in a match with only one break of serve. Taylor would be the third seed at the All-England Club. In Tingay’s opinion, “there never was a better chance of a British men’s winner for 35 years.”

With two days left before the Championships kicked off, the press contingent had plenty of work to do. When they weren’t writing columns lambasting Jack Kramer for destroying the game, they had dozens of new names and faces to learn. This would not be a typical Wimbledon.

* * *

This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

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The Highest-Ranked Slam Qualifier

Today, Aslan Karatsev plays for a place in the French Open main draw. He is the top seed in qualifying on the strength of his ATP ranking of 62. A top-70 ranking would normally guarantee main draw entry with room to spare. But when the list was finalized about six weeks ago, Karatsev lingered outside the top 120. Since then, he reached the semi-finals in Madrid.

It is rare for such a high-ranked player to appear in qualifying. (Or to put it another way, it is unusual for a player outside the top 100 to make such gains in just a few weeks.) But it is not unprecedented. Here are the 13th highest-ranked top seeds in men’s slam qualifying since 2000:

RANK  Year  Tourney        Player              
57    2013  US Open        Federico Delbonis   
59    2017  US Open        Leonardo Mayer      
62    2009  Roland Garros  Fabio Fognini       
62    2023  Roland Garros  Aslan Karatsev      
67    2004  Roland Garros  Albert Montanes     
68    2000  US Open        Harel Levy          
69    2007  US Open        Frank Dancevic      
69    2009  US Open        Thomaz Bellucci     
70    2015  Roland Garros  Hyeon Chung         
75    2005  Roland Garros  Andreas Seppi       
75    2008  Roland Garros  Eduardo Schwank     
75    2022  US Open        Constant Lestienne  
77    2007  Wimbledon      Nicolas Mahut

I extended the list to 13 for a reason: to include Wimbledon. The top 12 spots are monopolized by the French and US Opens, because there are so many ranking points available in the weeks leading up to those events. We have to go much further down the list to find someone at the Australian Open: Taylor Fritz was ranked 91st when he played 2018 Aussie qualifying.

While Karatsev has progressed smoothly this week, a high rank is no guarantee of success. Federico Delbonis was ranked 57th when he began qualifying rounds at the 2013 US Open. He was fresh off a run to the Hamburg final the month before. He lasted just 55 minutes against Mikhail Kukushkin, then headed home a first-round loser.

Vijay!

I’ve only gone back to 2000 because I don’t have full qualifying results for tournaments before that. But we can find some qualifiers from earlier years, because we know which main draw players came through the preliminary rounds.

Peter Wetz ran this query for me and found a surprise. In 1982, 35th-ranked Vijay Amritraj reached the Wimbledon main draw as a qualifier. 35! Arguably, he was even better than that. He had finished the 1981 season ranked 20th, in large part on the strength of a quarter-final showing at Wimbledon, where he couldn’t convert a two-sets-to-love lead on Jimmy Connors. Amritraj was considered one of the best grass-court players in the world.

The 28-year-old Indian star was stuck in qualifying because he was at odds with the tennis establishment. The men’s Grand Prix–roughly speaking, the equivalent of today’s ATP tour–established a new rule, that players must commit to at least ten Grand Prix events in order to be eligible for the slams. Another protester was Björn Borg, who wanted to keep playing only if he could pick his spots more carefully.

Amritraj had a lot of things going on, and he didn’t like being “press-ganged” into playing all those events. He was pursuing an acting career and would appear in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy. Still, this was Wimbledon. He claimed he had received hundreds of letters from fans begging him to play. In India, he said, the only two events that mattered were Wimbledon and Davis Cup.

So Vijay went to qualifying. He was the biggest story of the event, which typically didn’t make headlines at all. He opened his campaign with a win, something he had waited 11 years for. He hadn’t entered qualifying since 1971, when he was 17 years old and failed to clear the first round.

He won his second match with ease as well, straight-setting Christo van Rensburg. He learned that day that he had already earned a main draw place thanks to a withdrawal. In those days, there was no lucky loser lottery. When a main draw position opened up, the highest-ranked loser from the final round got in. So Amritraj would make the 128-man field either way.

As it turned out, he earned his ticket–but just barely. Vijay overcame an unheralded American, Glen Holroyd, 6-7, 3-6, 6-4, 7-5, 6-2. “I will need to be better than this,” he said, “if I am to do anything at Wimbledon.”

He did something, but not as much as he would’ve liked. The 35th-ranked qualifier came back from a two-set disadvantage in the first round to beat Jeff Borowiak, then he straight-setted Pascal Portes to reach the round of 32. There, he capitulated to Roscoe Tanner in what must have been a fine display of grass court tennis. Tanner, the 14th seed and 1979 finalist, beat him, 6-4, 6-4, 4-6, 4-6, 6-3. For the fifth year in a row, Vijay exited the Championships after a five-set loss.

Amritraj never did give up on his favorite event. He returned to the main draw for the next five years, reaching the fourth round in 1985 when he upset Yannick Noah. In 1988, his streak came to end when he lost in the final qualifying round to Heiner Moraing, 7-6(3), 4-6, 6-7(3), 7-5, 8-6. Players didn’t call qualifying “heartbreak valley” for nothing.

In 1990, he came back one more time. 19 years after his first attempt to crack the main draw, Vijay got through. Ranked outside the top 300, the 36-year-old was lucky to have a place in the field at all. But he beat Éric Winogradsky, Stéphane Grenier, and Stephen Botfield to qualify. He lost in the first round, but as usual, it took five sets to stop him.

Picking 32 Qualifiers

Australian Open qualifying starts in just a few hours. 128 men and 128 women stand three wins away from a spot in a grand slam main draw. Only 16 of each will remain at the end of the week.

Forecasting is particularly tricky during qualifying. Unlike most tournaments, when the top seeds far outrank the field, there’s little difference between a player on the fringes of the top 100 and one in the middle of the 200s. Andrej Martin, the top seed in the men’s qualifying draw, has the lowest hard-court Elo rating of the eight players in his section!

Let’s run through the 32 eight-player sections. I’ve posted pre-tournament forecasts for men and women. Keep in mind that these numbers don’t (yet) include any results from the week of January 3rd. For most players it doesn’t matter. For a few, like Melbourne semi-finalist Qinwen Zheng, it misses a major ranking boost.

To make things more interesting, let’s compare Elo’s preferences to those of two guys who pay more attention to Challenger-level tennis than I do, Alex Gruskin* and Damian Kust. At the end of the week, we’ll see how the experts fared against the machine. Unless, of course, they make the machine look bad, in which case I’ll delete this post and deny this ever happened.

Men’s qualifying draw

  1. Mikhail Kukushkin. Elo likes the veteran, giving him a 22.9% chance of qualifying. Damian picks NCAA star and 2021 breakout Nuno Borges (Elo: 13.7%), while Alex prefers big-hitting American Ernesto Escobedo (Elo: 16.9%, which will be higher after the algorithm includes EE’s challenger win this week.) Top seed Andrej Martin could hardly be a longer shot.
  2. Mats Moraing (23.9%). Both of our experts like Dominic Stricker (10.8%), the 19-year-old Swiss. Damian acknowledges a bit of wishful thinking here.
  3. Maximilian Marterer (29.6%). Elo prefers alliterative German names. Damian agrees, while Alex goes with the high seed in the section, #3 Daniel Galan (12.7%).
  4. Gilles Simon (34.1%). Gilles Simon is playing grand slam qualifying! Damian and Alex are both too young to remember Simon’s prime, which explains their pick of Tomas Machac (23.4%).
  5. Joao Sousa (31.7%). Damian agrees. Alex boldly picks Geoffrey Blancaneaux (5.7%), the fifth favorite in the section according to Elo.
  6. Jiri Lehecka (23.9%). Another vote of confidence from Damian. Alex picks Michael Mmoh (11.7%) for the first-round upset of the higher-ranked Lehecka.
  7. Salvatore Caruso (28.2%). Shockingly, Alex is finally on board with an Elo pick. Damian prefers the top seed in the section, #7 Taro Daniel (23.2%).
  8. Quentin Halys (21.6%). The most even section we’ve seen so far. Damian concurs, calling him “underrated,” while Alex goes with Yannick Hanfmann (18.1%).
  9. Damir Dzumhur (27.9%). Both of our experts go with Rinky Hijikata (1.1%). Rinky is the hipster pick, but he did get broken four times by Maxime Cressy this week.
  10. Christopher Eubanks (30.5%). I really thought we’d see Alex agree with Elo here, since the algorithm finally picked an American. But no, Gruskin goes with the formerly mulleted JJ Wolf (25.1%). Damian prefers Roman Safiullin (5.8%), the surprise star of Russia’s ATP Cup squad. It worked for Aslan Karatsev
  11. Hugo Grenier (31.8%). Damian agrees, while Alex goes with Juan Pablo Varillas (4.6%), a man who last won a main draw match on hard in 2019 at an ITF M15 in Cancun. Another “bold” pick from the intrepid podcaster.
  12. Jason Kubler (29.9%). We all agree!
  13. Frederico Ferriera Silva (23.4%). Alex goes with basically-tied-as-favorite Mitchell Krueger (23.1%), and Damian goes with a personal fave in Nicola Kuhn (6.8%).
  14. Alexandre Muller (24.1%). Both experts pick Jurij Rodionov (23.7%), the top seed in the section and practically a co-favorite per Elo.
  15. Cem Ilkel (20.6%). Damian correctly pegs this as a very balanced section–Ilkel is the least Elo-favored pick of the 16. Both Damian and Alex go with Zizou Bergs, a likeable player by humans, but apparently not by the machine (8.3%).
  16. Alejandro Tabilo (32.0%). We all agree! I’m guessing both experts were tired at this point, so we all just went with the top seed.

We all agreed on two picks, and we all picked different players in three sections. Of the rest, Damian and Alex voted the same way five times, Damian went with the Elo pick five times, and Alex agreed with Elo once.

Women’s qualifying draw

Damian focuses on the men’s game, so here we have only two sets of forecasts: Elo and Alex Gruskin’s picks, along with a few of my personal preferences where they differ from the algorithm.

The gap between the seeds and field is much greater in the women’s game, hence the much higher probabilities that many of the top seeds (and/or Elo’s choices) reach the main draw.

  1. Anna Kalinskaya (63.8%). Everyone’s on the same page here, even Nick Kyrgios.
  2. Martina Trevisan (47.6%). Alex picks the clear second favorite, Olga Govortsova (27.0%).
  3. Lin Zhu (45.6%). Again, Alex goes with the second fave, Anna Blinkova (25.5%).
  4. Nina Stojanovic (42.2%). I’ll be cheering for Caty McNally (27.7%), even if wouldn’t put my money against Elo. Alex picks another American, Hailey Baptiste (8.4%).
  5. Mariam Bolkvadze (26.1%). Sometimes it seems that Elo is trolling us, like this pick of an unseeded Georgian. Alex goes with Bolkvadze’s first-round opponent, Irina Maria Bara (9.8%), so at least one of the choices will be eliminated quickly.
  6. Lesia Tsurenko (54.7%). Alex agrees. My sentimental fave, as always, is Kathinka von Deichmann (3.7%), who I know better than to actually pick.
  7. Katie Boulter (40.6%). And sometimes it feels like Gruskin is trolling us. In a section with Boulter and Christina McHale (26.8%), he goes with Francesca Di Lorenzo (5.1%).
  8. Kateryna Bondarenko (26.0%). A balanced section, where Alex goes with the top seed, Kamilla Rakhimova. If Damian had projected this draw, he’d surely make a wishful pick of Victoria Jimenez Kasintseva (6.4%), 16-year-old runner-up in Bendigo this week.
  9. Rebeka Masarova (32.8%). I can only assume Alex is drinking heavily by this point, as he picked Kurumi Nara (13.0%) over both Masarova and top seed Sara Errani (28.7%). My only pick is that Errani reaches at least double digits in underhand serves.
  10. Mihaela Buzarnescu (30.3%). Alex picks Jule Niemeier, who at 30.0% is Elo’s co-favorite. I’d love to see Miki launch a comeback in 2022, but she has a tricky first match against Bendigo champ Ysaline Bonaventure, and Niemeier is clearly the rising star here.
  11. Harriet Dart (44.7%). Alex agrees, and in an uninspiring section, I’m guessing some of Harriet’s competitors do too.
  12. Dalma Galfi (35.2%). The second-favorite is Stefanie Voegele (30.3%), and that’s the player both Alex and I expect to see playing in the main draw.
  13. CoCo Vandeweghe (35.0%). It’s an absolute blockbuster of a first-round match (by qualifying standards, anyway) between Vandeweghe and Qinwen Zheng (16.8%). As noted above, Zheng reached the semis in Melbourne, so Elo will think more highly of her as soon as those results are included. It probably won’t swing things all the way in her favor, though–CoCo also reached a semi at the ITF W60 in Bendigo. Meanwhile, Alex is now doing vodka shots and picks Mai Hontama (13.9%).
  14. Aleksandra Krunic (26.3%). Another very even section. Alex goes with Cristina Bucsa (17.2%), while to me it looks like it’s Anna-Lena Friedsam’s (19.3%) main-draw spot to lose.
  15. Elisabetta Cocciaretto (36.7%). Every once in a while someone tries to explain to me how players could manipulate Elo ratings, if it matters. I don’t really buy the argument, but if anyone could game the system, it’s Cocciaretto. She seems to be doing it already. I don’t understand why she’s the favorite here, and I’m not sure I would even pick her in the first rounder against Lara Arruabarrena. Alex goes with the safe pick here, top seed Nao Hibino (20.7%).
  16. Aliona Bolsova (30.2%). Tons of talent in the bottom section, with Viktoria Kuzmova (24.6%), last year’s discovery Francesca Jones (12.1%), and local slugger Destanee Aiava (2.4%). Alex takes the top seed here, Anastasia Gasanova (12.6%).

Qualifying really is anybody’s game. According to my traffic logs, Alex visits my Elo ranking pages even more often than the Russian spambots do, and we still only agree on 3 of 16 picks.

Thanks to Damian and Alex for letting me including their picks here.

* Full disclosure: Alex and I are both members of the board of directors of the Serena Williams Power Tennis Country Club. As tennis insiders, it’s only natural that we have a conflict of interest.

Sebastian Ofner and ATP Debuts

This is a guest post by Peter Wetz.

Sebastian Ofner, the still relatively young Austrian, received some media attention this June when he qualified for the Wimbledon main draw at his first attempt and even reached the round of 32 by beating Thomaz Bellucci and Jack Sock. Therefore, some people, including me, had an eye on the 21-year-old when he made his ATP tour debut* at Kitzbuhel a few weeks later, where he was awarded a wild card.

Stunningly, Ofner made it into the semifinals despite having drawn top seed Pablo Cuevas in the second round. Cuevas, who admittedly seems to be out of form lately (or possibly is just regressing to his mean), had a 79% chance of reaching the quarterfinal when the draw came out, according to First Ball In’s forecast.

Let’s look at the numbers to contextualize Ofner’s achievement. How deep do players go when making their debut at ATP level? How often would we expect to see what Ofner did in Kitzbuhel?

The following table shows the results of ATP debutantes with different types of entry into the main draw (WC = wild card, Q = qualifier, Direct = direct acceptance, All = WC + Q + Direct). The data considers tournaments starting in 1990.

Round	WC       Q        Direct    All
R16	14.51%	 26.73%   24.46%    21.77%			
QF	 2.39%	  6.39%    4.32%     4.64%
SF	 0.51%	  2.30%    2.16%     1.59%
F	 0.17%	  0.64%    0.72%     0.46%
W	 0.17%	  0.26%    0.72%     0.27%

Since 1990 there have been 1507 ATP debuts: 586 wild cards (39%), 782 qualifiers (52%) and 139 direct acceptances (9%). Given these numbers, we would expect a wild card debutante to get to the semifinal (or further) every 9 years. In other words, it is a once in a decade feat. In fact, in the 28 years of data, only Lleyton Hewitt (Adelaide 1998), Michael Ryderstedt (Stockholm 2004) and Ernests Gulbis (St. Petersburg 2006) accomplished what Ofner did. Only Hewitt went on to win the tournament.

More than half of the players of all entry types who reached the final won the tournament. Speaking in absolute terms, 4 of 7 finalists (of ATP debutantes) won the tournament. (Due to the small sample size, it is perfectly possible that this is just noise in the data.)

If we exclude rounds starting from the semifinals because of small sample sizes, qualifiers outperform direct acceptances. This may be the result of qualifiers having already played two or three matches and having already become accustomed to the conditions, making it easier for them than it is for debutantes who got accepted directly into the main draw. But to really prove this, more investigation is needed.

For now we know that what Sebastian Ofner has achieved rarely happens. We should also know that by no means is his feat a predictor of future greatness.

* I define Kitzbuhel as Ofner’s ATP tour debut because Grand Slam events are run by the ITF. However, Grand Slam statistics, such as match wins, are included in ATP statistics.

Peter Wetz is a computer scientist interested in racket sports and data analytics based in Vienna, Austria.

Dominic Thiem’s Qualifying Marathon

When Dominic Thiem beat Marinko Matosevic in Madrid qualifying this week, it was the seventh time this year he fought his way into a tour-level main draw.  Seven is an awful lot for one season–and it’s early May. Last season, Santiago Giraldo qualified more than any other player, doing so only six times.

In fact, Thiem could easily set the all-time record. Only 46 players have ever qualified for seven or more tour-level events in a season, and 29 of those have stopped at seven. 10 players have qualified eight times, including Flavio Cipolla in 2011, Teymuraz Gabashvili in 2007, and Alejandro Falla in 2007 and 2009. An even smaller group of seven players have reached nine main draws through qualifying, most recently Kevin Anderson in 2010.

No one has ever reached double digits, and Thiem has almost six months in which to close the gap.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Thiem’s run is that he has failed to qualify only once this year, in Acapulco. At most ATP events, qualifying requires winning two matches, and twice this year he’s needed to win three. It’s a level of consistency almost unheard of among young players, or players of any age at his level in the rankings. It’s comparable to reaching the quarterfinals or better at seven of eight consecutive particularly strong Challengers.

If the Austrian fails to set a new record, it probably won’t be because he’s not good enough–it’s more likely to end up that way because he’s too good. His ranking started the year at #139, and after his win over Stanislas Wawrinka yesterday, he’ll ascend to almost #60 next Monday. That isn’t good enough to make the main draw cut at most Masters 1000 events, but it will earn him direct entry into anything else.

Thiem has climbed so high not just because of his success in qualifying, but also because of his performance after qualifying. In six of the seven main draws he has reached the hard way, he won at least one match, including three against seeded players. That sets him apart from other recent qualifying warriors. For instance, in 2009 Falla qualified for eight main draws and won only two matches. In 2010 Anderson won five main draw matches in nine main draws as a qualifier.

While qualifying records are impressive and entertaining, it is Thiem’s consistency and his quality play in main draws that bode well for his future as a top player on tour. Guys like Cipolla and Falla have qualified so much because they manage to stick around in a certain tier of the rankings without ever advancing any higher, not because they were ever on the brink of stardom.

That’s why, if Thiem does qualify for ten main draws this year, it will likely be the last qualifying-related record he sets. Falla leads active players with 37 successful trips through qualifying in his career, and that’s a mark the Austrian will never threaten.

Five First-Round Men’s Qualifying Matches to Watch at the US Open

Why wait until next week to get excited about the US Open?  Qualifying rounds start tomorrow, and there is a ton of action all over the grounds as 128 men and 128 women fight for 16 spots in each main draw.  There’s more cash on the line than ever, so you can count on some very hard-fought contests for the right to stick around into next week.

1. Ivo Karlovic vs Mackenzie McDonald

You know Ivo.  Two weeks ago, you almost certainly didn’t know McDonald.  The UCLA commit’s pedestrian junior career didn’t prepare anyone for his victories over Nicolas Mahut and Steve Johnson in Cincinnati qualifying last week.  That’s right: The unranked 18-year-old made the main draw of last week’s Masters 1000 event, and the cannon-serving veteran did not.

I saw much of McDonald’s match against Johnson.  To the extent you can be a believer in a pint-sized player without any weapons, count me in.  He fought Johnson hard on every point, waiting until the older player made a mistake. That won’t work against most tour-level players, but it might do the trick against the Croatian.

They are third up on Court 11 today.

2. Jesse Huta Galung vs Florent Serra

Two years ago, Huta Galung qualified in Flushing and took a set from James Blake in the first round of main draw play.  It was something of a career highlight for the Dutchman, who has only won four main draw matches in his tour-level career.

Yet this year, he returns to New York on a tear.  He has a 29-7 record in Challengers this year, including wins in Cherbourg (as a 346th-ranked lucky loser), St. Brieuc, Scheveningen, and Tampere, along with a final in Meerbusch last week.  He broke into the top 100 for the first time with this week’s rankings, and he has almost no points to defend until Cherbourg comes along again at the end of next February.

I’ve long loved Huta Galung’s game–he’s a stylish player with plenty of variety who can move particularly well.  Even in a losing effort, he is enjoyable to watch.

His opener would have been on this list regardless of opponent, but Serra has the ability to turn this into one of the better matches of qualifying week–certainly one of the tougher tilts in the first round.  The 32-year-old is unlikely to recover the form that took him into the top 40 seven years ago, but remains a threat at the challenger level.

Look for this match on Wednesday’s schedule.

3. Evgeny Korolev vs Illya Marchenko

In contrast to the previous match, stylishness isn’t the word that comes to mind here.  Korolev is not just a slugger; he’s a ball-basher who has lost his way.  He broke into the top 100 as an 18-year-old, peaking inside the top 50, and had a double-digit ranking as recently as three years ago.  At the age of 25, he should be heading toward a new peak, but instead is languishing in Challengers, losing to … well, just about everybody.

Injuries have repeatedly derailed his progress, and since he has retired in two of his last three matches, it wouldn’t shock anyone if he didn’t complete this match, either.  But on a good day, he has an uncanny ability to smack groundstrokes to within inches of the baseline.  Though it it’s never pretty, I’m always impressed.

Marchenko has a more well-rounded game, and despite never cracking the top 60, has the physical potential to return to that range.  His qualifying match against Christian Harrison in Washington a few weeks ago was one of the better displays I saw at that event.  But it was typical Illya.  He was the superior player, except on crucial points.  Marchenko’s last six losses have been three-setters, yet only against Harrison did he push the final set past 6-4.

These guys play third on Court 4 today.

4. Cedrik Marcel Stebe vs Malek Jaziri

(Hey, it’s my list. If you don’t like my choices, make your own list!)

Stebe dominated the 2011 Challenger tour, then kept his ranking just high enough throughout 2012 to earn a direct entry into last year’s US Open, where he beat Viktor Troicki in the first round.  Two weeks later he beat Lleyton Hewitt in Davis Cup, and it’s been all downhill from there.  Aside from the final at the Tallahassee Challenger in the spring, there’s little sign of the guy who charged into the top 100 barely out of his teens.

The 22-year-old lefty is too passive to have a natural home on hard courts, though he has registered some big wins on the surface, such as the ’11 Challenger Tour finals and that Troicki upset.  That makes Jaziri an ideal opponent for him.  The 29-year-old Tunisian has played a bit more on hard courts this summer, showing up at a couple of North American challengers and playing qualifying in Washington, but he’s a counterpunching dirtballer at heart.

It could make for some ugly tennis, or it could generate some entertaining scampering around the back of the court.  They’ll play tomorrow.

5. Mitchell Krueger vs Lucas Pouille

It wouldn’t be a qualifying preview without some of the youngest players in the draw.  With so many of the fringey Americans wildcarded into the main draw, US fans need to look deeper for local boys, and Krueger is a good place to start.  The 19-year-old had a single ranking point when he got a qualifying wild card last year (and won a round); he has now edged into the top 500.  While he hasn’t made a strong impression on his first trip around the North American Challenger circuit, he has scored two top-300 wins.

Pouille, also 19, is a bit more advanced, having won 10 matches at the Challenger level and above since the beginning of this year.  Many view him as a big part of the future of French tennis, and with a ranking on the cusp of the top 200, he should be heavily favored here.

But the outcome isn’t what matters here; neither player is likely to reach the main draw.  In a qualifying field full of guys 10 years older, these two are unquestionably on the way up.  They’ll be on the Wednesday schedule.

A few notes:

ATP Finalists in Qualifying Draws

Earlier this week, twitterer Double_Faute noted that 13 former ATP finalists were among the 128 men in the Australian Open qualifying draw.  Since the term “finalist” evokes names like James Blake and Tommy Haas, that sounds like quite the minefield for other qualifiers to navigate.

As it turns out, though, 13 is exactly what we should expect.  Since 2007, the average qualifying draw at a Grand Slam event has included 13.4 former finalists.  Of course, Blake and Haas aren’t typical.  The usual finalist-turned-qualifier is more likely to have a record like that of Jerome Haehnel or Wayne Odesnik.

If you missed Odesnik’s crazy week at the 2009 US Clay Courts, I don’t blame you.  The discovery here isn’t that qualifying draws are so strong, its that so many players have reached an ATP final at some point along the way.  The top four may have a stranglehold on the game’s highest honors, but like spots in the rest of the top ten, finalists at ATP berths seem awfully easy to come by.

Some records

There were plenty of former champions (or finalists, anyway) who hit hard times in the spring and summer of 2007.  The ’07 Wimbledon qualifying draw featured 19 former ATP finalists, while qualies at Roland Garros included 23.  To give you a flavor of what that meant for the week of qualifying matches, here’s the complete list of former finalists in that draw:

Davide Sanguinetti, Albert Portas, Bohdan Ulihrach, Adrian Voinea, Ivo Minar, Gilles Muller, Ricardo Mello, Rainer Schuettler, Santiago Ventura, Ramon Delgado, Alex Calatrava, Andrei Pavel, Wesley Moodie, Harel Levy, Wayne Arthurs, Fernando Vicente, Christophe Rochus, Younes El Aynaoui, Jerome Haehnel, Mariano Zabaleta, Michel Kratochvil, George Bastl, Kenneth Carlsen

Yep, I had forgotten about most of those guys, too.

Of the last 24 slams–my records of qualie draws only go back to 2007–every one has had at least 7 former finalists in qualifying.  All but five have had at least 10.  The large numbers in 2007 may have been due in part to the wider array of ATP events in 1998 and before, but by 1999, the number of ATP events had dwindled to 71, just six more than in 2012.  So the effect is likely minimal, and we might find more former finalists in slam qualifying draws if we were able to look another 10 years back.

Anyway, in the time span we do have to work with, the number of former finalists in slam qualie draws isn’t going down.  Last year, those draws at Wimbledon and the French both had 16 former finalists.

The next wave

A question that qualifying-watchers might find more interesting is, how many men in these draws go on to reach ATP finals?  We’d all like to catch the next del Potro or Raonic on court 14, so how many future finalists are there?

The 2007 French continues to impress and amaze, with 22 men in the qualifying draw who went on to play in an ATP final.  There were certainly some guys worth watching that week in Paris:

Horacio Zeballos, Sergiy Stakhovsky, Pablo Andujar, Jeremy Chardy, Robin Haase, Lukasz Kubot, Mischa Zverev, Rajeev Ram, Michael Berrer, Martin Klizan, Frederico Gil, Frank Dancevic, Alexandr Dolgopolov, Lukas Lacko, Viktor Troicki, Marcel Granollers, Dudi Sela, Wayne Odesnik, Fabio Fognini, Raemon Sluiter, Marin Cilic, Santiago Giraldo

(Yes, Zverev reached a final–after qualifying for the Metz event in 2010.  This post has taken an unusually long time to research and write because of the number of times I’ve felt the need to check.  I’m looking at you, Federico Gil.)

The 2007 Australian Open qualifying draw also featured 22 future finalists, and US Open qualies that year included 21.  Of course, many of those names overlap.

Here’s where the six years of data holds us back–I have no idea whether 22 is a historically high number.  Perhaps it’s typical once players’ careers have run their course.  Glancing at the full list of the 2007 Roland Garros qualifying draw, it does appear that we’ve seen all the finalists we’ll see, but of course the same doesn’t apply to qualies from 2009 or 2010.

Remarkably, though, we’ve already had two finalists from the 2012 US Open qualifying draw: Grega Zemlja and Roberto Bautista Agut.

Keep all of this in mind when you next watch a qualifying match.  The tennis might be messy and the players you’re watching may never be famous, but in a few years, you may see them again in the finals of your neighborhood ATP 250.