He is a former world No.16, has five career titles, and has appeared in the third round of all four Grand Slam events. However, now Nikoloz Basilashvili is struggling to cover his costs in professional tennis.<\/p>\n
Basilashvili, 33, remains a hero in his native Georgia. He\u2019s the country\u2019s highest-ever-ranked player, and in July 2018, became their first male player to ever win an ATP<\/a> title. His victory at the German Open was duly followed by more glory at the China Open, and established him as a genuine force on the elite stage.<\/p>\n However, as he prepares for this week\u2019s Challenger Sumter event in America, Basilashvili knows he is no longer battling just for ranking points. Now outside of the world\u2019s top 120, he\u2019s revealed the losses he racked up in 2024 after recovering from injury.<\/p>\n His 2023 campaign was cut short by an elbow issue. Since his return, he\u2019s been mostly confined to the Challenger Tour, although he did manage to come through qualifying at the Australian Open<\/a> in January.<\/p>\n Sign up here<\/a> to receive all the latest tennis and Wimbledon<\/a> news straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n Last year, he made just over \u00a346,500 in prize money. His travel and coaching costs, however, amounted to almost \u00a3107k, meaning a net loss of 88k.<\/p>\n In an interview with the Guardian, he\u2019s now given a harrowing insight into life at the bottom end of the professional game. He said: \u201cI wanted to quit after my injury because I was very burned out for many years.<\/p>\n \u201cYou are mostly alone, and you don\u2019t really have a lot of friends to talk to. I don\u2019t know if there is any other sport like this, to take a flight on the same day you play a match and then next week you are in another city.\u201d<\/p>\n Basilashvili has racked up career earnings of \u00a36.6million, so he can hopefully recover from his short-term loss. Not all Challenger Tour competitors, though, are that fortunate, and the Georgian\u2019s story emphasises the struggles many encounter below the top level.<\/p>\n For all the latest tennis and Wimbledon<\/a> news you can join our WhatsApp community<\/a> here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He is a former world No.16, has five career titles, and has appeared in the third round of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[22932,49,48,42411,42409,42410,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-66695","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-atp-tour","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-challenger-tour","12":"tag-nikoloz-basilashvili","13":"tag-nikoloz-basilashvili-challenger-tour","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}