Challenger Finals Focus Week 40: Jinan, Roanne, Olbia, Maia, Catania and Santa Cruz

In the first of today's Challenger finals, Mattia Bellucci ended up earning his fifth Challenger title and first of the season as he beat Spain's Martin Landaluce 6-3 in the 3rd in Jinan, China.

Bellucci's best level came in a high quality first set in which he was executing his game-plan to perfection in terms of beating up on a weaker backhand, forcing the Spaniard into unrecoverable defensive positions on a regular basis and he was mixing up placement on serve exceptionally too. The main issue on top of that for Landaluce was that it was difficult for him to contain that high tempo forward pressure that Bellucci often brings to the table in quicker conditions.

Landaluce did play a very good second set though in which he started to make good use of the opportunities in which he could get his forehand into play while capitalising on Bellucci's level dropping substantially from the 1st set too. The Spaniard broke for *2-0 off a fortunate dead net cord winner and then started to dictate points with the forehand quite well.

The second of three Challenger finals I watched was the Olbia final between Britain's Jacob Fearnley and Damir Dzumhur. Dzumhur was a deserved winner, winning 7-6, 6-3. This is Dzumhur's 15th Challenger title win in his career, and a first in two years.

There were weather warnings in the area before the encounter and the challenging wind was something that I felt altered a lot in terms of Dzumhur thriving in the wind to be that ultimate disruptor with the slices, changes in height, variety and everything in between. While Fearnley has relied upon huge serving and backing it up with a heavy ball. The Brit wanted a clean kill like his previous rounds but ended up being in a bit of a street fight that would not benefit him much. Fearnley showed good spells at back-end of the 1st and found his feet a lot more in the 2nd set too. But once he got caught out by an outstanding Dzumhur defensive lob at 3-4* in the tiebreak the hesitancy came back on the next point which cost him the breaker.

Second set was decided by two first forehand errors from Fearnley in the eighth game at *3-4 and then Dzumhur pulls off two point-winning passing shots. Fearnley won just 64% of first serve points which was down on his numbers of the week.

Mika Brunold's form continued to go from strength to strength as he backed up the win in Tulin, Austria with another Challenger title in the Roanne Challenger this week. He beat Matteo Martineau 2-6, 7-6, 6-1.

To a degree, the Swiss had to weather a bit of a storm throughout the first half of the match, but the biggest turning point came at *2-3 in the 2nd where Brunold needed to save four break points that would have seen him go a set and a break down. Gradually from there Brunold was fronting up on baseline a lot more, producing a higher volume of great quality net approaches to Martineau's backhand and creating width which kinda opened up opportunities for him to then mix things up at net more effectively. Below is my point of the match and it was an important one too.

The three other Challenger finals were in Maia, Portugal, Santa Cruz, Bolivia and Catania, Italy. Francesco Passaro claimed his fifth Challenger title after beating Zsombor Piros 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in the final. Passaro needed to come from a set down from quarter-final onwards and afterwards pin-pointed his mental strength for getting over the line.

Gianluca Cadenasso won the Catania Challenger, beating Radu Papoe 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 to break for the title. Perhaps the biggest moment of the tournament for the Italian was when he found himself 0-4* a double mini break down in the 3rd set tiebreak to Germany's Marvin Moller and ended up turning it around to sneak the win in the quarter-finals. He very nearly got eliminated there.

Thiago Seyboth Wild routined Hugo Dellien in the Santa Cruz Challenger final 6-4, 6-3. Dellien was suffering with an abdominal issue that compromised him in the final. 5 of Seyboth Wild's 9 Challenger titles have taken place in South America.