Inigo Cervantes' Scheduling Issues and Why The ATP Needs a Rule Change

If you have been an avid follower of my blog, you know that last summer I ripped into Hyeon Chung.  Now, I didn't do it because I don't like the guy, nor did I do it because he was playing poorly.  I blasted him for artificially padding his ranking by playing in ATP Challenger Tour events in which he was miles better than the competition, and while this gave him what were essentially free ranking points, it wouldn't bode well for him on the main tour.

Well, after writing my article, Chung did slow down, and seemingly stopped playing challengers for good.  However, like I predicted, he has struggled on the main tour, despite what "young gun enthusiasts" will tell you.  Beginning with the grass season of last year, Chung has only won ten, non-qualifying matches on the main tour, posting a 10-13 record, and failing to make the Semifinals of any non-challenger tournament he has played.  Since 2016 started, Chung has won three matches and hasn't won multiple matches in the same tournament.  Obviously, how you plan your schedule as you try to make the transition from the main tour from the challenger ranks is very important.  Trying to ease your way into the main tour, where you aren't throwing yourself in the fire, yet you are actually making the transition, is an art.  And, if you fail to master this art, like Chung did, then you are in for a troublesome transition.

This brings me to Inigo Cervantes.  More specifically, I think his scheduling, like Chung, has been horrible.  Let's start off with how  Inigo Cervantes is  somehow currently ranked number 59 in the world.  Looking since the beginning of 2014, Inigo has not won an ATP Tour, main-draw match off of clay.  In fact, if we qualifying, he has only won five qualifying matches off of the dirt since 2014 began.  So, how is this guy ranked number 59 in the world?  By virtue of clay court challenger tournaments and, this year, weak ATP 250 fields on the clay too.  That, and by playing extremely often.

Just this year alone, for instance, Cervantes has played seven tournaments (the good thing is that none are challengers, but my point remains), the only week when he didn't play was during the second week of the Australian Open.  Last season, Cervantes played 32 tournaments, which included 24 ATP Challenger Tour events, of which 21 of those were on clay.  In all, Cervantes played 24 events on clay, which accounts for 75% of all tournaments played in 2015. And since he generally went further in the clay court tournaments he played, most of which was against lower level opposition, the ratio of matches on clay to matches on hard/grass is even more stark.

Now, this isn't to say that Inigo was losing in all of these tournaments that he entered in.  Cervantes won a ridiculous (by my count) 62 matches last season.  This included four challenger titles last year, which is a very impressive feat.  However, it is important to note that three of the four Cervantes' titles were either before or right after Wimbledon, so it is a bit odd that Inigo decided not to try to play more ATP Tour 250 level events following all of these victories, instead sticking mostly to the clay court challenger events.

Playing almost exclusively on clay courts at the challenger level, when one's ranking is high enough to at least enter the qualies for 250 events on other surfaces, seems like a handicap and very weird.  Also, playing as often as Cervantes played could lead to burnout, and while Cervantes didn't show any signs of burnout when winning the ATP Challenger Tour Finals, perhaps his slower start to 2016 was residue from last season's high workload.  Yes, I know he made the semis of the 250 in Sao Paulo, but it's not as if he were beating the Top 10 to get there, as the field in Sao Paulo was laughable.  The reason I even decided to write this piece was because I saw Cervantes getting demolished by Pablo Carreno Busta, a guy only seven places ahead of him in the rankings, currently, but playing at level that made him seem 50 spots above Cervantes.

So, why is this a problem?  Shouldn't we just be happy for the guy that he is making a career for himself playing tennis?  Well, yes and no.  I will admit, Cervantes is manipulating the system brilliantly, just like Chung also has.  I will give Cervantes credit, at least the challenger fields he has played have solid clay court players entered, which we cannot say the same for the Asian challengers that Chung entered last year.  However, that doesn't excuse the fact that they are just that, challenger tournaments.  The design of  ATP Tour is supposed to work is that a player is supposed to have to qualify for ATP Futures Tour events, then get direct entry into the futures tournaments until they can try to qualify for challengers, and then get into the main draw of challengers until they can qualify for 250 events, and at that point trying to make the full jump into the "major leagues" and get direct entry into 250 events.

However, I believe Cervantes gamed the system, but ultimately hurt himself, by making the jump too late.  He hung out on the challenger circuit for all of last year, fairly easily accumulating points and building his ranking up well into the Top 100.  But, because Cervantes has never really challenged himself with consistently trying to qualify for ATP World Tour events and try to gradually make the transition to the main tour, he has for the most part hopped the "trying to qualify for 250 events" stage of the process, and because of this, I believe he has bitten off more than he can chew.  Before boosting his stats this week at an event in which two of his three opponents were ranked over number 90 in the world, and an extremely (what was essentially a) 50-50 win over Delbonis being his other victory, Cervantes started out the year going 3-7 with only two main-draw victories.  On hard court, Cervantes went 1-4 and didn't a main draw match.

This brings me to my next point.  Besides boosting his ranking with challengers, how does Inigo expect to be successful on the main tour by almost exclusively playing on clay and by largely ignoring the most popular surface on the main tour: hard court.  The scheduling just doesn't make sense to me.  Yes, I get it, Cervantes is much more comfortable on clay than any other surface.  However, as he saw his ranking rising, it would make a lot of sense for him to start at least giving hard courts a shot for ATP 250 events on hard courts.  Going to an event like ATP Atlanta or ATP Winston Salem would not only give him a chance to warm up for the US Open, in which the money is too big for Cervantes to pass up, but would also help ease the transition onto the main tour.  I know that becoming a grass courter is extremely unlikely for Inigo, but it seems self-mutilating for him to largely ignore hard courts for much of last year.

And the effects of him ignoring hard courts last year are seen this year when he can barely win a match on a hard court.  Cervantes' only win on hard this year has come against (currently) world number 185 Luke Saville and other than that, Inigo is finding is extremely tough to even win a qualifying match for a ATP 250 event.

In addition, like I mentioned earlier, it has also been foolish of Cervantes to play as many tournaments as he has played.  32 tournaments is a ton of match play, and given the start to this year, Inigo is not planning on slowing down.  When you play as often as Inigo does, wear-and-tear starts to occur, and if Cervantes is not more careful in the future, the stress he is putting on his body could lead to full-blown injury which is extremely damaging to his career.  However, his huge amounts of matchplay indicate to me that he is not confident that he can maintain his ranking without it, and thus I suspect it will continue, as Inigo knows that he is not good enough to go even deep in most of the tournaments he is playing (again, I suspect Sao Paulo to be an outlier when all is set and done), and thus will continue pushing his body until it gives out.

So, is there anything the ATP can do to avoid having rankings inflated like Cervantes has now (and that Chung had last year)?  I believe there is action that can be taken, and I think a rule change is desperately needed.  I believe I have come up with a solution to these issues.  I think that a good new rule would be that if a player wins a certain number of challenger event tournaments (and the same could be applied to futures events too, but I am just focusing on challengers), say two or three, in a given year, then if their rankings allows them to enter ATP 250 qualifying events, then they should be banned from challenger events for a month or two and only allowed to enter main tour events.  The "if the ranking allows them" clause gives fast-risers like Taylor Fritz time to move up the rankings before being barred from challenger events and exceptions can be made to this rule in extraordinary circumstances (which Cervantes certainly doesn't have).

I also think that there should be disincentives for playing almost exclusively on one surface.  Yes, this is a radical idea, but I think it is necessary in order to produce more well-rounded players on tour, or at least players who are more respectful of the tour.  I believe that players who are entered into a major should be fined for playing on a different surface in their tournament before playing a major.  So, when a guy like Cervantes (or more blatantly Delbonis) disrespect Wimbledon by not only not playing a grass warmup tournament, but by their last tournament before Wimbledon being on clay, which anyone who knows tennis realizes are extremely different surfaces.

And finally, I believe that there should be incentives in place to reward players for gaining a certain amount of ranking points while playing less tournaments.  This would give players a reward for really focusing in on tournaments that are important to them instead of just putting their names down on entry lists and playing as many tournaments as they possibly can.  And while it wouldn't hurt players for playing a huge number of tournaments, it might make them think twice before putting their name down on another entry list.

Now, I don't want to make this issue seem like it's exclusive to Cervantes.  In addition to Chung, someone like Daniel Munoz De La Nava is also guilt for the similar manipulation of the ATP Tour and poor scheduling.  However, Cervantes is the best example of this problem, as he is ranked inside of the top 60, and I think it is more than fair to call him on what he's done.

Because, it's quite obvious, Inigo Cervantes should not be the 59th ranked tennis player in the world.

Russian Men's Tennis Will Again Rise in 2016

2015 was a year to forget for Russian men's tennis.  Long gone were the days of Safin, Youhzny )at his peak), and Davydenko.  In 2015, there were only three Russians in the ATP World Tour Top 100, with the highest being Gabashvili at #50, and Kuznetsov and Donskoy at numbers 79 and 90 respectively.  However, I think 2016 will bring lots of good fortunes for Russians ranked between 100 and 200 in the world, with many breakthroughs in this bunch.

Mikhail Youhzny is old and on the decline, so he will be excluded from my discussion.  And while I do Kudraytsev and Kravchuk can slightly improve his ranking position with continued work, I don't think time is on either of their sides. I think that the three biggest "movers" this year from Russia will be Aslan Karatsev, Andrey Rublev, and Karen Khachanov .  Let's take a look at each one individually.

Aslan Karatsev
Currently 22 years old and ranked the lowest out of the three at #195, including him on the list might surprise some.  After all, he did not have particularly inspiring results to end the season.  But, I see a lot to like in his game.  His return of serve is on the level of an ATP top 100 player.  Now, you might say, "that's because he's going up against challenger competition", but even in Moscow when going up against the Kohlschreiber serve, he stayed strong.  He broke serve six times in three sets in that match and was very close to winning it.  That match showed me that, when Aslan plays to his abilities, he can play at a Top 50 level.

The key for Aslan will be to improve his serve.  If a guy is having a particularly hot service game, such as Gombos in Bratislava in his last match of the 2015 season, then Karatsev's mediocre serves can have a debilitating effect on his game.  However, as I mentioned before, when the return of serve is going and the serve is consistent enough, Aslan can soar, as evidenced by his challenger title in Kazan last year, an event in which he beat three players currently in the Top 100 in Kuznetsov, Donskoy, and Bhambri, along with beating fellow Russian (and star of this post) Kravchuk in the Final.

So, how do I predict this season will go for Aslan?  Well, he's off to a good start, easily upsetting Bemelmans, a player just outside the Top 100, breaking serve four times while only getting broken once.  I expect, as Karatsev continues to improve his serve, that results like this will continue.  I expect Aslan to break the Top 100 in 2016 and win a grand slam match.

Andrey Rublev
2015 was a good year for Andrey Rublev (currently ranked number 185).  He really announced himself in Barcelona, qualifying and then taking out Fernando Verdasco in straight sets before then taking a set off of Fabio Fognini, who once again proved this year that he can at an elite level on clay.  And while Rublev did not have great results following the result in Barcelona, he did continue to have pretty good form throughout the clay season, beating top 70 player Pablo Carreno-Busta in the masters event at Rome, and then coming extremely close to beating Marin Cilic in Geneva.

But, perhaps what was most impressive for me was the scare he put into Anderson after beating higher ranked players in qualifying of the US Open.  He took a set off of Kevin (a player who eventually beat Andy Murray) and even got him to 5-5 in the third set, but just couldn't pull it off.  Watching some of that match, I was amazed that Rublev was able to match the power game that Anderson possesses.  It showed me that he could match the level of a Top 15 player and even, if he plays his cards right, pick up the occasional victory.  So, while his losses to Cilic and Anderson are just that, losses, the manner in which he competed is encouraging and definitely something to build on in the coming season.

I believe that Rublev will crack the Top 90 this season, giving him a solid base to work on for the rest of his career.

Karen Khachanov
While I, admittedly, don't know much about Karen (ranked 152 currently), I would be remiss to leave him off of this list.  The 19 year old has handled the transition between being an ATP Futures Tour player to being an ATP Challenger Tour player beautifully.  His year on the Challenger Tour (three titles on the Futures Tour in 2015) really went on the upswing following after the US Open.  He won a Challenger event in Istanbul, shocking Sergiy Stakhovsky in the Final and sending a message to the rest of the tennis world that he will have what it takes to make it to the Top 100 (and beyond).   This title included a straight set win over fellow rising star Karatsev.

And despite not making it further than the Quarterfinals of another Challenger event last season, there were glimpses of promise for Karen.  Whether it be the wins over Dodig and Ward in Mons, the victory against Marchenko (albeit there was a retirement in the second set) against Marchenko in Brest, the straight set victory over Bemelmans (like Karatsev) and Ilhan in Mouilleron Le Captif, I think that Khachanov has shown that he is becoming one of the better players on the ATP Challenger Tour.  His hard hitting game is showing to be especially effective on a hard too (whether indoor or outdoor), so I am excited to see what he can do in Australia!

I believe, given Khachanov's quick rise already, that he can possibly crack the Top 100 this season, although I do expect, as a young player (and explained thoroughly in my previous piece), that there will be many growing pains in 2016.

With Karatsev, Rublev, and Khachanov playing well, 2016 is looking like the year Russian tennis will again rise.