Chennai ATP challenger: Italy’s Luca Nardi named top seed

CHENNAI: The Chennai Open ATP Challenger 100 Men’s International Tennis Championship 2024 is to be hosted by the Tamil Nadu Tennis Association (TNTA) between 4th and 11th February at the SDAT Tennis Stadium in the city.

Since the inauguration of the stadium in December 1995 for the SAF Games, many international tennis events have been held here every year, barring the Covid years of 2020 and 2021.

ATP Challenger tournaments were conducted in the years 1996, 2018, 2019, 2023 and now in 2024. The popular ATP 250 tennis tournament was held every year from 1997-2017 and for the first time ever in Chennai, a WTA 250 event was organised for women in 2022.

The President of Tamil Nadu Tennis Association, Vijay Amritraj said, “On behalf of the TNTA, I am delighted to congratulate Rohan Bopanna on becoming the World’s No 1 doubles player and winning the Australian Open at the same time. Rohan’s journey to the top began when he reached his first ever ATP Tour doubles final along with Prakash Amritraj at the Chennai Open in 2006.”

He further added that, “This, once again, is proof that conducting international tournaments such as the ATP Challenger, enable Indian players to excel on the world stage.”

In this edition of the Chennai Open ATP 100 International Tennis Championship 2024, players from 14 countries are participating. The top seed is 20-year-old Luca Nardi of Italy who has improved his world ranking from 162 last year to 117 this year.

He is followed by 26-year-old Sumit Nagal of India, fresh from his upset win over 31st seed Alexander Bublik at the recently concluded Australian Open 2024. Sumit has moved up from 502 in 2022 to 137 in the current rankings.

The other seeds are Psvrcina Dalibor (CZE-165), Vitaliy Sachkov (UKR-168), Stefano Travaglia (ITA-196), Federic Gaio (ITA-198).

Former World No 17, Bernard Tomic is also expected to participate in this year’s ATP Challenger making the field much stronger. In the last ATP Challenger event held in 2023 in Chennai, Max Purcell of Australia won the event and went on to do well reaching his career high world ranking of 40 later in 2023 and is now ranked 45.

Ramkumar Ramanathan, India’s No 2 and Nikoloz Basilashvili, 31-year-old Czech player and a former World No 17 have been given wild cards for the event. Other Indian players who will be in the fray are Mukund Sasikumar, Siddarth Vishwakarma and Manish Sureshkumar.