Challenger Finals Focus Week 42: Seoul, Brest, Ningbo, Sioux Falls and Guayaquil

It was a pretty stacked week of Challenger action this week. The Brest Challenger down in France probably boasted the best crop of talent across the board and some very good stories, but I feel like Seoul had a strong week of tennis additionally. A few decent surprises took place over on the hard courts of Sioux Falls too. Now let's get into the epic finals that took place this tournament week.

Seoul Challenger Final - Terence Atmane needed six match points in defeating Coleman Wong 7-6, 3-6, 7-6

This singles final was moved indoors due to hours and hours of heavy rain which delayed the final. I felt that it could benefit both,but Atmane a little more which was evidential in the end. It was mostly uphill for Wong in terms of competing with Atmane solely from the service line and on first serve ball. But Wong was executing excellently with his plus one forehand, and was right there with the Frenchman from the ground. Wong got on a bit of a roll in the 2nd set and took advantage of having more second serve opportunities to work with.

The story of the match was the damage that Atmane was doing from first ball from the service line, especially with the serve down the T that it felt like he could land at will. But also the tension he showed when trying to get his fifth Challenger title. The Frenchman double faulted on his second match point at *6-5 but kept generating more match points through some inspired forehand passing shots under pressure. To Wong's credit, he was extremely bold on a lot of the match point saves, but was way too eager to rush in on that last point and got punished for it. Atmane improves his record to 5-1 in Challenger finals while Wong is 1-7 in finals at this level after today, two of those losses coming in the last two weeks.

Ningbo Challenger Final - Yaroslav Demin def. Petr Bar Biryukov 7-5, 2-6, 7-6 to win his maiden Challenger title in what was a war of attrition.

This was essentially a bit of a heartbreaker for Bar Biryukov in the sense that he led 4-1* in the deciding set and was just two games away from sealing his second Challenger title of the season after his triumph in Bengaluru. Felt the things that he was doing in his semi-final against Broady that could impact him negatively were being punished more often here. The double faults were leaking aplenty in his victory yesterday but they were going unpunished due to difference in opponent, more of an ability to suffocate backhand, which he could do less today versus Demin and the toughest part was that Demin struck a mean ball when in advanced areas of the court.

Demin is not a destructive ball-striker but he is dependable, clinical and quite ruthless when a short ball presents itself, while also being very compact with his two-hander. In doing so he took away some of Biryukov's tactical value.

In the decider, Biryukov's ability to get easy points on his first deal dried up a lot and he was having to defend more and more. That led to Demin opening the court well, penetrating cross-court effectively with a strong backhand side and taking the ball inside the court increasingly in the last two sets.

Brest Challenger Final - Moise Kouame def. Martin Damm 6-4, 6-7, 7-6 to win his maiden Challenger title at the age of 17.

The fairytale ending actually happened in Brest as Moise Kouame came through from a break down in the deciding set. The French crowd were pretty much reacting to every point that the Frenchman won to really get behind their man.

The level of interest coming into this one as a matchup stemmed from the unstoppable serving dynamic of Damm going up against someone who is capable of defending as well as anyone on the Challenger circuit at present. Kouame frustrated Virtanen in that aspect in the semi-finals and he was able to steal points in the final too. Damm's lefty serving strength was a huge obstacle but I felt like Kouame was still getting back a lot of returns and built pressure in a way that many other players just could not this week.

In phases of the decider you could sense that Damm tiring from game to game, less power from the ground, less ability to recover out of both corners, but he was also winning less outright points with the serve alone. Kouame ended up experiencing some tension at 2-2 in the decider in a game where he breaks himself with three wild forehand gifts, but recomposes himself to boomerang break straight back.

The crowd continued to drive him towards the final tiebreak. Kouame found himself a mini break down at first but was able to steal a point with the most unlikely of high quality returns to restore parity. Damm's opponents from previous rounds like Dino Prizmic, Clement Tabur and others were not able to make this happen with that much regularity at all.

The youngster claimed the title courtesy of a great lob that forces an awkward overhead error from Damm, one of several throughout the final. The Brest champion now has a main draw wildcard for the Paris Masters tournament next week.

In the last two Challenger finals of Tournament Week 42, firstly, Dylan Dietrich roared back from a set behind to beat Canada's Liam Draxl, 1-6, 6-3, 6-4 on the hard courts of Sioux Falls, United States. The Swiss had a solid route to the title, knocking out the No.1 seed and recent Fort Worth champion Jenson Brooksby, JJ Wolf and Colton Smith along the way. In doing so he backs up his Columbus title win earlier in the year.

The Challenger tournament in Guayaquil, Ecuador is still yet to be concluded due to heavy rainfall. Hugo Dellien and Joaquin Aguilar Cardozo will be competing for the title later today (Monday 2nd of November) at around 3pm UK time.