Russian tennis veteran Mikhail Youzhny had a very rough season in 2015. The once dominant player, saw himself only win nine matches and lose 24 on the main tour. The woeful play led to the Russian falling outside of the top 150 of the singles rankings.
Youzhny's Remarkable Run
After a bad loss in last year's Swiss Indoors Basel qualifying round, the Russian was forced to reassess his game and his schedule. Youzhny then decided to head to the ATP Challenger Tour to regain match confidence and match toughness. It deemed successful as he won five matches in a row in his first challenger appearance in a long while. The Russian ended the good run with a title at the Eckental Challenger. The title broke history as he had the longest gap between winning his last challenger title, 15 years ago in 2000 at the Samarkand Challenger.
After a much needed confidence boost at the end of 2015, his great success on the Challenger tour continued to 2016. Youzhny has gone a remarkable 15-0 on the Challenger tour in 2016. The 15-0 run has been capped off with three big title victories. The veteran started off with the Bangkok Open title by winning his fifth match of the tournament, over Go Soeda in the final. Youzhny then went on to win the Bangkok Open 2 title but in extremely good form as he did not drop a set in five matches. His 15-0 run was most recently capped off at the Manila Open where he gutted out a tough three set match over Lukas Lacko in the semis and a strong straight sets win over Marco Chiudinelli.
Thanks to his great form on the Challenger Tour, the 33-year-old has surged to number 70 in the world after being number 84 the past week. He was number 153 in early November and it is remarkable how he has gone up so many spots just off the Challenger Tour in such a short amount of time. As a former top 10 player, Youzhny is no stranger to hard work. The 33-year-old had struggled to find a spark in his game and the move to the Challenger tour proved to give him a second wind.
Youzhny's Transition To Main Tour
As Youzhny's ranking is climbing, he is starting to get closer to automatically qualifying for main tour tournaments. While his ranking has been low, he has had to go through qualifying to give himself a chance in the main draw. Hopefully this break through can give him the confidence he needs to now make the proper transition from the Challenger tour to the ATP World Tour. At 33, Youzhny hopes he has many more great years of tennis ahead of him.