Every year, a handful of players win their first title ever. When fans focus on players like Federer or Nadal or Djokovic, it’s easy to neglect that most players rarely win a title. Players as highly ranked as Julien Benneteau, ranked 34 in the world, have never won a title despite having been on tour since 2000, a solid dozen years on tour. To be fair, Benneteau has reached 6 finals, so he’s getting a whiff of a title, but just not quite there yet.
Martin Klizan, of Slovakia, ranked 52 in the world, has been having an outstanding year for a player of his caliber. He’s won several Challenger titles and reached the finals of a few others. He had a breakthrough of sorts by reaching the fourth round of the US Open upsetting Jo-Wilfried Tsonga along the way.
So here was Martin Klizan, in his first final at the ATP tour level (Challenger titles don’t count to your “tour wins”), and he was facing Fognini who has had more recent success, admittedly more so on clay. This was in St. Petersburg, Russia, an event that normally is played later in the year. Klizan was attempting to be the first Slovak to win a title in 8 years (not nearly as long as the last British woman to win a tour-level title, admittedly).
In that second round US Open match where Klizan upset Tsonga, most people point to Tsonga’s play rather than Klizan’s play as being the factor. Tsonga didn’t appear to play all that well, and that may well have been the case, but Klizan may have one of those games where it doesn’t look like he can do a lot, but he’s still winning anyway. Say, something like Gilles Simon, a world level pusher who nonetheless was once in the top ten.
Perhaps the same can be said today when he beat Fabio Fognini, 62 63. Fognini appeared to have chances to win, but was broken, and eventually lost going away 62 63. Fognini shook his head wondering how he had lost. Even the announcers said that he would have to re-examine his game. Maybe it wasn’t Fognini. Maybe it was Klizan.
After the tournament, the interviewer congratulated Klizan who had played a marathon match in the semis and then went on to play doubles. He asked if Klizan were going to take the week off. He said he was unsure, and might head out to Bangkok, which is where he was scheduled to play. The life of a mid-ranked player is one of chasing tournaments, because you never know how you’re going to perform in any given week. You can’t assume, like the top guys, that you’ll make it deep every tournament you play.
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, the defending champ at Metz, had an easy time, pummeling Andreas Seppi 61 62 in less than an hour.
