{"id":811780,"date":"2026-07-20T07:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T07:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/811780\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T07:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T07:30:08","slug":"australias-bernard-tomic-wins-first-challenger-tour-title-in-eight-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/811780\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia’s Bernard Tomic wins first Challenger Tour title in eight years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bernard Tomic is back in the winner’s circle with the Australian veteran cracking his first Challenger Tour title in eight years.<\/p>\n

Reaching the final of the Lincoln Challenger tournament in Nebraska, the 33-year-old showed some grit to save a championship point before downing Estonian Mark Lajal 4-6, 7-6 (4), 7-6 (3).<\/p>\n

With a world ranking at 206, down from a career-high of number 17 back in 2016, Tomic started as underdog against 23-year-old Lajal, who is ranked world number 159.<\/p>\n

The crafty Queenslander nailed his service games, on target with 72 per cent of first serves as well as nine aces to cause headaches for his rival.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

Tomic also had a three-set battle to book his place in the final, downing American wildcard Spencer Johnson 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-2.<\/p>\n

It was his fourth Challenger Tour title, with the last coming in Mallorca in Spain in 2018.<\/p>\n

A quarter-finalist at Wimbledon back in 2011 and former junior champion, Tomic recently lost in the second round of qualifying, falling to fellow Australian Chris O’Connell 6-4, 6-4.<\/p>\n

On the main ATP Tour, his fourth and last singles title was at the 2015 Colombia Open in Bogota.<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bernard Tomic is back in the winner’s circle with the Australian veteran cracking his first Challenger Tour title…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,41699,297552,2649,76810,386683,51186,588,85,747,8821,8935],"class_list":["post-811780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bernard-tomic","tag-challenger-tour","tag-final","tag-lincoln","tag-mark-lajal","tag-nebraska","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-title","tag-win"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}