Welcome to the wacky world of a ATP Challenger 75 men\u2019s tennis tournament, San Diego style.<\/p>\n
Over the last six years, the Barnes Tennis Center started with a ATP 250 tourney, scaled down to the current Challenger 100 in January and then added the Challenger 75 named the Tennis Warehouse Open.<\/p>\n
As a tournament\u2019s ranking points go down, unpredictability seems to go up.<\/p>\n
The semifinals included three unseeded players, including a qualifier, along with No. 1 Nishesh Basavareddy.<\/p>\n
The Newport Beach resident then completed an uneven path of his own to take the title over Brazil\u2019s Igor Marcondes 7-5, 6-4 in Sunday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been an up-and-down week,\u201d said Basavareddy, 21, ranked No. 167. \u201cI\u2019ve been broken (on serve) and have broken back. But it also gave me confidence that I could come back.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the fourth career Challenger title and second of the year for Basavareddy, who reached a career-high No. 99 a year ago. The Stanford alum also had a highlight this year when he beat No. 10 Taylor Fritz, a San Diego native, in the opening round of the French Open.<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s title came with a $17,000 payday from a $107,000 prize purse.<\/p>\n
As much as the play, the final may be remembered for wardrobe issues. Basavareddy changed shirts about eight times overall during breaks, and both players switched outfits between sets.<\/p>\n
Into the second set, facing a 2-1 deficit, Basavareddy used the break to not only change his shirt, but also adjust his shoes, socks and an ankle wrap for a prolonged delay that led to a serve penalty.<\/p>\n
In a following exchange with ATP Supervisor Keith Copeland, Basavareddy proclaimed, \u201cOutrageous, man! Why are you here?\u201d<\/p>\n
Since he\u2019s prone to sweating, Basavareddy said that he carries 12-14 shirts with him for a match.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s unfortunate that they made that decision,\u201d Basavareddy said. \u201cIf I keep sweating, it can affect the court. It\u2019s something that I\u2019ll have to deal with in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Basavareddy split the next two games before going on a 4-1 surge to take the title.<\/p>\n
Marcondes, 29, ranked 324th, showed progress in his second year of a comeback after serving a three-year suspension for violations of the International Tennis Federation\u2019s anti-doping test policy.<\/p>\n
In the semifinals, Basavareddy outlasted Dylan Dietrich, ranked No. 409, from Switzerland 6-7, 6-4, 5-1 (ret.) in 2 hours, 56 minutes for an 8:30 p.m. finish on the eve of the final.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally, you expect to see the seeded players do better,\u201d Basavareddy said. \u201cBut everyone at this is a great player, so that makes it tough.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to the wacky world of a ATP Challenger 75 men\u2019s tennis tournament, San Diego style. Over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,74,76,75,127],"class_list":["post-478187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}