Three-time grand slam champion Andy Murray is returning back to the Challenger tour for the first time since the year he turned professional back in 2005.

The Brit is set to take to the court in Manacor next week to play in a hard court tournament named after his rival Rafael Nadal. Murray is currently in the process of stepping up his comeback from a second hip operation earlier this year. The Rafa Nadal Open will be only his third singles tournament since January. Murray has previously lost in the first rounds at Cincinnati and Winston-Salem to Richard Gasquet and Tennys Sandgren.

Murray, who is currently ranked 329th in the world, had previously hinted that he may return back to the lower levels of competition in order to help regain his form. It will be the first time he has played a Challenger tournament since the 2005 Mons Open.

“I’m quite aware of sort of where I’m at just now and what my level is. It’s competitive at this level but it needs to be better,” Murray told atptour.com last week.
“Maybe I need to play a level down to get some matches and build my game up a little bit before I start playing on the Tour again.”

The 32-year-old had declined a wild card invitation to play at next week’s US Open due to concerns that he wouldn’t be fit enough to contest best-of-five set matches. He reached the second round of the tournament last year before losing to Fernando Vertdasco.

Murray’s return to the Challenger Tour is expected to be short lived. He has already confirmed his intention to play a duo of ATP Tournaments in Zhuhai and Shanghai. On Wednesday he added the European Open in Antwerp to his schedule, where a maximum of 250 ranking points will be on offer.

“With Andy Murray on our tournament poster, we are now reaching absolute world class and taking the European Open to an unprecedented level in Belgium.” Said tournament director Dick Norman.

Since his comeback in June, Murray has won one title on the ATP Tour. Doing so alongside Feliciano Lopez in the men’s doubles at The Fever-tree Championships.

NEW YORK: Andrea Petkovic would start play on the main stadium court for the second consecutive day. Coming off a nice win on Monday over Wimbledon quarterfinalist Shuai Zhang, she faced another formidable opponent today in Camila Giorgi. The 27-year-old was herself a quarterfinalist at Wimbledon last year, but came into this event with a losing record in 2019. At one point this season, she went on a seven-match losing streak. Giorgi’s go-for-broke groundstroke approach can challenge almost anyone when it’s working, but can give away matches without much resistance when it’s misfiring.

In the first set, Giorgi would miss way too often. Petkovic was solid on the ground, putting pressure on Giorgi to go for too much and commit errors. Andrea took the first set 6-3 with two breaks thanks to some forceful forehands and a costly double fault from Camila.

The second set started off with more of the same. A deep forehand return from Petkovic would cause another error from Giorgi, giving Andrea a 2-0 lead. But Camila’s aggression would finally begin to pay off, as she broke right back due to some groundie winners, as well as Petkovic’s own costly double fault at deuce. They would trade more breaks as the second set progressed. At 5-5, Giorgi’s offense allowed her to dictate play and draw errors from Petkovic, who was too often on the defensive. Camila would break for 6-5, and Petkovic would slam a ball into the ground and toss her racket. Giorgi would serve out the second set 7-5.

The third set was nothing short of a roller coaster, with eight breaks of serve in this set alone. Despite the crowd being pretty thin on a weekday at this new event, they got rather loud for this battle. After Giorgi broke for 2-1, Petkovic would repeatedly swipe her racket against the court. It slipped out of her hand on the last swipe, almost hitting a ball kid who was rushing to hand Andrea her towel. Petkovic would be the first player to hold their serve in the third, earning her a 4-2 lead with some great scrambling around the court to counter Giorgi’s offense. Camila would break back by pouncing on some Petkovic second serves, and finally get her first hold of the third to even things up at 4-4. Giorgi earned a break point by smoking two forehand winners down the line, but slammed her racket on the ground and got a racket abuse warning of her own after not converting.

At 5-5, there were three extremely close line calls on the baseline. The chair umpire would overrule one particular line judge twice, with Petkovic complaining to the umpire regarding the missed calls. After that discussion, Giorgi would hit two winners to break and serve for the match. Yet Petkovic would bounce right back, prevailing in a few grueling rallies to break for 6-6 and force a deciding tiebreak. But the tiebreak would be all Giorgi. Despite a double fault giving away an early advantage, Camila would hit four winners in the tiebreak, and take it 7-3. In the end, the Italian’s oppressive ground game would prove too much. It was a captivating two-hour-and-forty-minute affair on a hot day in the Bronx.

The next match featured recent Wimbledon semifinalist Barbora Strycova against 24-year-old American Bernarda Pera, who received a wild card to enter this tournament, her first US Open Series event this summer. In the opening round, the left-handed Pera crushed Veronika Kudermetova 6-0, 6-2. Meanwhile Strycova is yet to win a match since Wimbledon last month, as she lost in both qualifying, and as a lucky loser in the main draw, last week in Cincinnati.

Today Strycova took the first set comfortably 6-3, winning two of the nine break points she earned. Pera would break first in the second, thanks to a lob that landed right inside the baseline which Strycova didn’t run for. After a second Pera break, Strycova would outdo Petkovic in today’s racket tossing contest, throwing hers nearly from the baseline all the way to her chair. Pera would claim the second set 6-2.

Bernarda would continue her momentum in the third and break Strycova four more times. Pera was feeling it at this point, with some deep returns and a few more excellent lobs. After going down two early breaks at 3-0, Strycova launched a ball well out of the stadium. The American was just too strong off the ground on this day, and took the third 6-1.

Tuesday’s other two singles matches ended in retirements. Alize Cornet was up 7-6(5), 4-0 when Zhu Lin retired with a leg injury. And Katerina Siniakova claimed the first nine games of the match before Anastasia Potapova retired in their match.

In doubles, the No.1 seeds Sam Stosur and Shuai Zhang were upset by Margarita Gasparyan and Monica Niculescu. That leaves the Taiwanese sister team of Hao-Ching Chan and Latisha Chan as the top remaining seeds, as they prevailed today in straight sets over Lyudmyla Kichenok and Galina Voskoboeva.

NEW YORK: In the first match of the day on Victor Kiam Stadium, Andrea Petkovic took on Shuai Zhang. Petkovic is a former top 10 player, but finds herself ranked 89^th in the world with an 8-14 record this season. With that ranking, she’s been forced to play qualifying at many tournaments. Painfully, she’s failed to qualify at six tournaments this year despite winning the first round of qualifying at all of those events. She’s directly into this new, smaller WTA event. But in the opening round faced a tough draw in the fourth seed Zhang, who was a quarterfinalist at Wimbledon just last month.

In the first set, the players would trade three straight breaks, with Petkovic breaking twice thanks to some penetrating forehands. After serving out the first set, the 31-year-old German would break two more times to open the third, yet Zheng returned the favor to even the second at 3-3. Much like the first set though, a few crucial forehand winners would get Petkovic the break to go up 5-4. All that was left was a Petko hold, followed by a Petko dance, to cap off a satisfying win in straight sets.

After missing some critical serves earlier in the first set, Petkovic would say tell the on-court interviewer that her ace on set point was out of frustration. “Sometimes you’ve got to use violence, I guess,” she cheekily said in the post-match interview. Andrea will faYce another recent Wimbledon quarterfinalist in the next round in Camila Giorgi, who comfortably defeated Margarita Gasparyan today in the second match on the Bronx Open’s main court.

The crowd was rather sparse to start the day, not surprising for a new event about an hour outside midtown Manhattan at 10:00am local time on a Monday. However, there were a few vocal Petko fans, who Andrea came over to thank after the match. Contrarily, Yulia Putintseva wouldn’t have quite as much fun on this day.

In the second match of the day on Pershing Square Stadium, Putintseva faced Lin Zhu, a 25-year-old qualifier from China. It all started off well for Yulia, who moved Zhu all around the court with drop shots, lobs, and passes, gaining herself the break in the third game. But it all started to unravel when she attempted to serve out the set at 5-4, as a few close line calls didn’t go Putintseva’s way. She had no recourse as there is no Hawkeye at this tournament, and the chair umpire would not overrule.

After getting broken for 5-5, Yulia would call the trainer to have her right arm and shoulder worked on. She’d earn three break points immediately following the medical timeout, but after failing to capitalize on any of them, Yulia would become even more frustrated. She would complain about another close line call, and regarding the ball kids not retrieving her towel quickly enough. She’d eventually toss her racket against the wall, as well as slam it down on the ground after serving a double fault in the tiebreak. When she went down 5-1 in the tiebreak, she hit a ball in the direction of her coach. Her coach spent much of this time looking down at his nails, especially when she sought his eye contact. Zhu would take the first set tiebreak 7-2.

The second set would see drive Putintseva find even more things to complain about: more close line calls, more ball kid frustration, fans talking in the crowd, and police sirens. She would even mock Zhu’s team for cheering their player on, feeling they were cheering her errors. In between service points, Yulia could be heard saying, “Unbelievable, this tournament is unbelievable.” That was shortly followed by, “God help me.” Putintseva would lose the second set and the match, and immediately gripe to the chair umpire regarding the conditions she had to play under. That may have been both the first and the last match in the Bronx for Putintseva.

In other action on Monday, American CoCo Vandeweghe continued to fight her way back from a foot injury that sidetracked her 2018 season and caused her to miss most of this season as well. Two years ago, she reached the quarters or better at three of the four Majors. Now she finds herself ranked 466^th in the world, and received a wild card into this event. Today in just her third match of 2019, she took just three games at the hands of Anna Blinkova. It’s going to be a long road back for CoCo, was just 19 months ago was ranked inside the top 10.