First Georgian to Win ATP Tennis Tournament
By Mariam Chanishvili
Thursday, August 2
Georgian professional tennis player - Nikoloz Basilashvili - has made tennis history for Georgia and become the country’s first player to claim an ATP World Tour title on Sunday.
The athlete scored the result after a marathon of seven matches at the Association of Tennis Professionals competition in Hamburg, playing against Argentina’s Leonardo Mayer.
Mayer is two-time titlist in the German Tennis Championships 2018, and by beating him, Basilashvili got a chance to become the first Georgian to crack the Top 40 of the ATP Rankings, rising 46 spots to surpass former World No. 42 Irakli Labadze's record set in July 2004.
"I gave my heart to every match. I'm pretty sure every player worked so hard for this, but it's an unbelievable moment for me," Basilashvili told atpworldtour.com.
He noted that working with Jan De Witt – new coach, helped him a lot.
“He put me on the right route, so obviously it was an excellent week,” he said.
He will rise to 35th in the rankings, the highest spot any Georgian has ever held on the tour.
In 2016, he qualified for his first Australian Open, losing the first round in straight sets to Roger Federer. That year in July Basilashvili played in his first ATP tournament final, the Austrian Open Kitzbuhel that is part of the 250 series, where he lost to Paolo Lorenzi in two sets. In October he recorded his first win over a Top 10 player when he defeated world number 10 Tomas Berdych in the Vienna Open.
The Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) was formed in September 1972 by Donald Dell, Bob Briner, Jack Kramer, and Cliff Drysdale to protect the interests of professional male tennis players.
