STARNBERG, May 4, 2020

Yannick Hanfmann is the champion of the inaugural Tennis Point Exhibition Series held on indoor-clay at the BASE Tennis Academy in Höhr-Grenzhausen. The tournament has become the first live-tennis event since the professionals tours were suspended in early March. Hanfmann beat fellow German Dustin Brown in Monday’s final 4-2, 4-0.

The World No. 143 clinched the opening set after 17 minutes by hitting an ace and dominated the encounter in the following. Hanfmann capitalized on all of his three break point chances and sealed victory with another ace after 33 minutes.

“I am the first champion in times of corona,” Hanfmann told organizer Ruben Herrera with a smile after his second win over Brown within the last four days.

What’s the secret of his success against “Dreddy”? “I return well against his serve and I can take him out of his comfort zone. We played a lot of matches over the years and it’s always fun, as there is a lot of variety in his game,” Hanfmann said.

Hanfmann also emerged victorious from the last two official matches between the two buddies. The 28-year-old from Karlsruhe won in the second round of the 2018 Sparkassen Open in Braunschweig and defeated Brown en-route to his maiden ATP Challenger title win in Ismaning three years ago.

Choinski finishes third

Earlier in the day, Jan Choinski clinched the third place of Tennis Point Exhibition Series. The 23-year-old Briton defeated Johannes Haerteis 4-2, 4-2.

“Match by match I started to feel more comfortable,” Choinski said during his post-match interview. “Compared to the beginning I became better and better, however, it will still be a long process to get back to where I was.”

Matches were played according the “Next-Gen-ATP scoring system” in an eight-man round robin group format. On the final day of competition, the last group matches were played, followed by the four play-off matches.

“During this format everything is very close and you need to be focused all the time,” Choinski said.

The Tennis Point Exhibition Series continues with the second stage on Thursday featuring a 12-player field when Germans Tim Pütz and Daniel Altmaier as well as Austria’s Lucas Miedler and Rameez Junaid from Australia will join the line-up.

Yannick Hanfmann takes the final match 4-2 4-0 against Dustin Brown and with that, draws our first event to a close. See you on Thursday when we start back up again and there may be a surprise or two for the next tournament 🤫 #BringingTennisBack @YannickHanfmann pic.twitter.com/od8g50VfOr

— exo_tennis (@exo_tennis) May 4, 2020

Day 4 Results

Florian Broska d. Yannick Hanfmann, 4-3 (7-5), 3-4 (7-5), 4-3 (10-8)

Johannes Haerteis d. Jean-Marc Werner, 4-2, 4-1

Benjamin Hassan d. Dustin Brown, 4-2, 4-2

Jan Choinski d. Constantin Schmitz, 3-4 (7-4), 4-0, 4-1

Constantin Schmitz d. Jean-Marc Werner, 4-0, 4-1

Florian Broska d. Benjamin Hassan, 4-3 (7-5), 4-2

Jan Choinski d. Johannes Haerteis, 4-2, 4-2

FINAL: Yannick Hanfmann d. Dustin Brown, 4-2, 4-0