The Spanish have a tradition where a child adopts both his father’s last name and his mother’s.  Not everyone follow the tradition as evidenced by Ferrer, Nadal, Lopez.  But there is Garcia-Lopez, Gimeno-Traver, Bautista-Agut.  With so many Spaniards playing tennis, only rivaled by their Pyrenees neighbors, the French, it’s not surprising you’ve never heard of Pablo Carreno-Busta.

Despite the numerous Spanish players on tour, many have been closer to the older side, Nadal’s age or older.  The next generation of Spaniards, like the next generation of any country, seems lacking.  Indeed, no country has produced teen whiz kids in the last few years, short of Bernard Tomic who is no longer a teen.

Carreno-Busta has become the king of Futures in 2013.  On the one hand, this is no small feat.  The futures is filled with so many up-and-comers that it’s hard to remain consistent.  If you could consistently win, you’d move up and play Challengers.

At the Futures level, the tournaments are no longer given locations or big sponsors, but are instead simply numbered sequentially, like F1, F2, as to when they occur on the calendar.  And thus, Carreno Busta won at Turkey F2 and F3, won Spain F1 through F7, but not Spain F5 which he didn’t play, for a total of 8 (that’s eight!) consecutive Future events.

The points won at Futures is so paltry that even ranked around 500 in the world, you can only expect to get to 300 in the world with 8 consecutive wins.  You need to win at the Challenger level to gain respectable points.

Carreno-Busta then got through qualifying at Casablanca, won a first round match, and then lost to Kevin Anderson whose been having the best clay season of his life.  He lost in the opening round at Rome.  He then won a round at Barcelona.  Then, he qualified in Portugal in his best event yet, beating Benneteau, Goffin, and Fognini, before losing to Stan Wawrinka in three sets.  For those that pay attention to the grindfest that is men’s tennis, this was Carreno Busta’s coming out party.

It’s rare to see any player get so deep in a tournament that you’ve never heard of.  Each year, a few players introduce themselves this way.  In the last year, it was players like Goffin, Klizan, and Bautista-Agut, another Spaniard.

Now, it’s one thing to bother a player ranked 30 in the world.  It’s another to bother Roger Federer.

Federer has crafted his game to be offensive, and when he’s playing his game, opponents feel a tremendous amount of pressure to keep up and keep even.  Carreno Busta doesn’t have a big serve.  What he does have is a nice sharp down the line backhand.  Federer went to his offensive game, and Carreno Busta, not used to Federer firepower, couldn’t handle it.  With breaks up early in each of 3 sets, Federer made sure that Carreno Busta wasn’t going to make his fame pushing the Swiss star, and won 62 62 63.

Fourth seed David Ferrer struggled a bit against Marinko Matosevic, the Australian player.  Although Ferrer won 64 63 64, he was down 3-0 in the second, before coming back strong to take the set.

The only other big interest match was Gilles Simon against Lleyton Hewitt, he of the perpetually injured and perpetual comeback.  Hewitt turned back the years and dominated the first two sets, 63 61.  But with Hewitt having played so little, and with this being a 5 set match, not a 3 set match, and with Simon’s relentless style, Simon clawed his way back, first taking the third set, 6-4.  Darren Cahill, fellow Aussie, predicted that if Simon won that third set, Hewitt would lose in 5, and would be unable to seal the deal.

Understand that Hewitt had never beaten Simon in 3 meetings, not even taken a set, but he has the pride of a former number 1.  Simon took the second set, 6-1, and was up 5-1 in the fifth set, with chances to clinch, but Hewitt kept coming back, breaking and holding, until he tied it at 5-all mostly due to Simon errors.  Finally, Simon held at 6-5, and then played a strong return game to break and win 7-5.