On the evening of February 4, Beijing time, Zhang Zhizhen, the first brother of Chinese men's tennis, faced the fourth seed and Russian star Rublev across the net at the ATP 500 Rotterdam Open. In this encounter, although Zhang Zhizhen's serve performance was still good, due to the gap in strength and experience, he finally lost to his opponent. It should be noted that this is the eighth consecutive first-round exit of the tour for Zhang Zhizhen, can he get rid of this losing streak? Faced with this puzzle, many people are looking forward to Zhang Zhizhen being able to find the answer as soon as possible.

In fact, there are many magical patterns in men's professional tennis, such as one in the Challenger, that is, many times, the top seed often struggles to reach the end. There may be many fans who don't believe in this law, so let the facts speak for themselves, and let this article take you to see it today.

Last week, there were four Challenger tournaments running at the same time, so let's take a look at the highest-level challenger, the ATP CH100 Piracicaba Challenger in Brazil. Because of its abundance of sugar cane, Piracikaba is also known as the Sweet City. Argentina's Camilo Hugo Carabelli is the top seed, and it was here that he won his fifth career Challenger title last season. From this point of view, it is probably not an exaggeration to say that this is the blessed land of Camilo Ugo Carabelli.

Sure enough, in the first round, Camilo Hugo Carabelli defeated Brazil's JL Reis Da Silva, who played with a wild card. In the second round, facing compatriot Gollarini, Camilo Hugo Carabelli did not relent, swept in two sets and reached the quarterfinals. Unfortunately, that was where his good fortune ended. In the quarter-finals, Camilo Hugo Carabelli was defeated despite his best efforts against another compatriot, Bruchaga, and stopped his progress.

With the Piracicaba Challenger out of the way, let's take a look at the ATP CH100 Koblenz Challenger in Germany. Germany's Squial was the top seed in the challenge, but he narrowly missed the gutter in the first round against his lucky loser, Bulgaria's Kuzmanov, winning just three games in the first set. Fortunately, in the following game, Squire won two sets in a row to defeat his opponent and advanced in danger. Still, the situation suggests that Squial's form is not as good as it could be. Sure enough, despite defeating Jordan's Sherbay in the second round, in the quarterfinals, Squire was successfully overturned by France's Zepieri after taking the lead. In the face of the sighs of the home fans, Squire left them with only a blank and somewhat sad back.

Last week, Australia's Rinki Hijikata, who reached the last 16 of a Grand Slam, entered the tournament's top seed at the ATP CH75 Challenger in Brisbane. However, he also failed to go far, and after a hard-fought first-round win over wildcard compatriot Hay-Jones, he was unexpectedly defeated in the second round against compatriot McCabe, who had just won his first career Grand Slam victory.

Compared to Rinki Hijikata, Argentina's Fei Gomez fared even worse. He was the top seed at the ATP CH75 Cleveland Challenger last week, but he lost in the first round to the newly turned professional American Kasone, becoming the only top seed to be eliminated in the first round of last week's challenger.

A lot of times, the world of tennis is really just a teahouse. In this teahouse, there are many tea customers who are already quite famous here, and there are always fledgling newcomers who come here in anticipation of tasting the sweet tea. And the author, in fact, is just an obscure storyteller in this teahouse. I hope that my article can bring some fresh information to the fans, whether it is praise or criticism, maybe just to be able to make me go further. That's it for today, and it continues tomorrow.(Source: Tennis Home Author: Yixin Jushi)