Challenger Finals Focus Week 41: Lisbon, Guangzhou, Fort Worth, Cali, Florence

In this edition of the Challenger Finals Focus, we look at the five Challenger tournaments that took place this week in Lisbon, Guangzhou, Fort Worth, Cali and lastly Florence.

Let's start with the Guangzhou Challenger final in which Australia's Tristan Schoolkate clinched his fourth career Challenger title after besting top seed Coleman Wong in a great final, 4-6, 7-6, 6-4.

Schoolkate struggled to get the best out of his serve throughout a lot of the first set, but I felt gradually he started to gain confidence during the match after saving break points in his first service game of the second set. The second set tiebreak alone was the biggest turning point at 3-3 where the Australian basically implements a strategy that was showing signs during that set that it was proving problematic for Wong, and that was his ability to disturb Wong with the backhand slice.

It wasn't something he used extensively every point but it was something that changed the picture and in the end flipped the dynamic of the encounter. Wong then double faults on set point down in the breaker and Schoolkate takes over the third set with exceptional execution of his transitional game and great hand skills at net.

Alexander Ritschard soared to the title at the Lisbon Challenger as he beat lucky loser Svyatoslav Gulin 6-2, 6-1 to claim the crown all the way from qualifying.

The key factors in this final was that Gulin appeared to be impacted by his output throughout the week, not only had he played seven matches but a lot of them were of a more strenuous nature than his opponent, especially the war of attrition with Elmer Moller in the semi-final.

Gulin also lacked the necessary toolkit to be able to knock the Swiss off his stride and alter his confidence in a back court rally and that was a huge problem even in the early stages. Ritschard could essentially prepare for what speed, height or type of ball was coming in his direction and he dictated exclusively because of this.

The drop shot has also been a regular feature of the Swiss' victories this week. He used it extensively in his victories over Nagal and Trungelliti, but he brought it out from time to time in the final additionally. His main intentions all week was to push his opponents back with heavy groundstrokes then exploit the space available in the forecourt area. It kinda put less stress on him overplaying versus great movers in Lisbon.

Jenson Brooksby ended up enjoying a memorable week in the hard court event over at Fort Worth, Texas. He disposed of No.2 seed Darwin Blanch 6-1, 6-4 and was a class above the rest of the field throughout.

The first time I had ever watched Blanch play was in his second tour-level main draw match versus the great Rafael Nadal at the Madrid Masters two years ago. In that encounter I recognised he needed to improve his return of serve reliability to a large degree, even despite the altitude in that tournament. His return points won during that season was 30.3% across the year and it is now sitting at 36.9% this season. I feel like that needs to keep improving as it was still a huge deficiency in a matchup versus Brooksby who is not a fearful server.

In this encounter, Blanch had opportunities early and then struggled to find the court for about 30-35 minutes where he just could not hang with the ball machine style of Brooksby for long at all.

Blanch enjoyed a brief spell of confidence with his first strike game that revolves around his lefty serve out wide, but that was soon neutralised by Brooksby and the balance of power reverted to Jenson overwhelming him with the complexity of rallies and just having a superior eye for those types of points. Those exposed Blanch's lacking dimensions quite a bit.

Brooksby is now at No.94 in the world, wins his first Challenger in exactly four years and the first title of any kind since he beat Frances Tiafoe for the Houston title last year.

In the last two Challenger finals of the week, Pucinelli de Almeida of Brazil clinched his second Challenger title of the year and his third overall as he beat Valerio Aboian 7-6, 6-3 in the Cali final. His route to the final included beating former Top-20 Nicolas Jarry, who was playing his comeback tournament this week and the No.1 seed Gustavo Heide.

Lastly, Filippo Romano capitalised on the field in Florence as he claimed the title over there. The highest ranked player he faced was Filip Cristian Jianu of Romania at No.286 in the first round and his opponent in the final itself was Michele Ribecai who was still ranked at just No.288. He beat his fellow Italian in the final 6-3, 4-6, 6-2.