{"id":945929,"date":"2026-10-30T03:54:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T03:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/945929\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T03:54:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T03:54:16","slug":"little-known-aussie-tennis-player-emulates-ivan-lendl-with-achievement-not-seen-in-44-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/945929\/","title":{"rendered":"Little-known Aussie tennis player emulates Ivan Lendl with achievement not seen in 44 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

You’d be forgiven if you’ve never even heard of Matthew Dellavedova (the tennis<\/a> player that is). But the 26-year-old from Victoria has just achieved what no player has done in the last 44 years.<\/p>\n

Dellavedova – who shares his name with the Aussie basketball player – won his 100th match of the year at an ATP Challenger event in Tamworth this week. It made him the first player since the legendary Ivan Lendl in 1982 to win 100 professional matches in a calendar year.<\/p>\n

Dellavedova started the season ranked outside the top 500 in men’s tennis. But he’s toiled away on the Challenger circuit (the level below the ATP Tour) and managed to climb to No.232.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Remarkably, a 100-win season has only seen him earn about $57,000 in prize money on the lower circuit, and shows just how difficult it is to survive when you’re ranked outside the top 200. His career prize money is a tick over $200,000 in singles and doubles combined.<\/p>\n

“One hundred match wins in a season is very, very special,” he told tennis.com.au. “It’s a credit to the hard work and it’s cool to get the 100 in Australia.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s normal to draw a conclusion that because now I’m winning a lot of matches, therefore I’ve changed something because at the start of the year I was struggling a little bit. But I think the fact that I kept the same processes, I kept the same disciplines and consistency with my training and my mentality and diet and all that kind of stuff that’s what’s kind of turned it around for me.”<\/p>\n

\"Matthew<\/p>\n

Matthew Dellavedova at the Bendigo International tennis tournament. (Photo by Martin Keep\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Matthew Dellavedova sets sights on Australian Open<\/p>\n

Dellavedova said he’s only missed one week of tennis across the entire 2026 season. He took a week off between events in February in Australia before embarking on an eight-month stint in Asia where he won 83 of 107 matches and nine titles.<\/p>\n

Next month he’s slated to play Australian Open wildcard tournaments in Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide. The winners of each event will receive direct entry into the grand slam in January.<\/p>\n

“The match wins weren’t something I was thinking about (at the start of the season),” he said. “I was honestly just trying to crack the top 300 and since I’ve done that, the goal has shifted more to Australian Open qualifying.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You’d be forgiven if you’ve never even heard of Matthew Dellavedova (the tennis player that is). But the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":945930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-945929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945929","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=945929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/945930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}