SAVANNAH, May 7, 2018
After an electric afternoon, both the singles and doubles champions have been crowned at the 2018 St. Joseph’s/Candler (SJ/C) Savannah Challenger.
In the singles final, Hugo Dellien of Bolivia came onto the court full of confidence and ready to attack the ball. He quickly took the opening set 6-1. In the second set, US-American Christian Harrison turned the tides, bouncing back to take the set 6-1 and force a third set. In the final and decisive set, Dellien and Harrison traded serves midset, but it would ultimately be Dellien who would break Harrison on the final game and close out the match after one hour and 56 minutes with a final score of 6-1, 1-6, 6-4.
🏆 @SarasotaOpen
🏆 @Sav_ChallengerIncredible run for @hugo_dellien is capped with another title. The 🇧🇴 is the champion in Savannah, 61 16 64 over Christian Harrison. pic.twitter.com/FmX0qKMg3A
— ATP Challenger Tour (@ATPChallenger) 6. Mai 2018
Dellien clinched the second ATP Challenger Tour title of his career with the win today. Two weeks ago he picked up the first title of his career in Sarasota at the $100k USTA Pro Circuit Event.
“The truth is that I’m really happy to win both these titles, because I wasn’t expecting it. Last year I had a surgery, but my work during the off-season was very good and I think that was essential for winning these tournaments,” Dellien told.
With the title in Savannah, Dellien rises nearly 30 spots in the ATP rankings to a new career-high ranking of No. 129 in the world.
Santillan/Bambridge take doubles title
In the doubles final, Akira Santillan and Luke Bambridge had the tall task of taking on No. 3 seeds Enrique López Pérez and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan. López Pérez and Nedunchezhiyan most recently made the finals of the Tallahassee Tennis Challenger last week and were looking to avenge their loss and pick up a title. Santillan and Bambridge had different plans though as they were quickly able to take the championship match 6-2, 6-2.
This is first doubles title for Santillan on the ATP Challenger Tour and thirst for Bambridge. Bambridge was a finalist at the SJ/C Savannah Challenger in 2017 with Mitchell Krueger but was unable to lift the title until this year.
Challenger play returns to the USTA Pro Circuit in July for the Nielsen Pro Tennis Championship. In the meantime, players head to Europe for more clay court warm-up tournaments on the ATP Challenger Tour. Everything is on the line as players are battling it out for precious ATP ranking points with hopes of improving their ranking for the Grand Slams.
