Vietnam tennis ace off to great start in ATP Challenger Tour

After great success on the ITF Men’s World Tennis Tour with four consecutive titles and one runner-up medal within just two months, Nam’s aim is improve his ATP World Ranking.

Bangkok Open is a competition in the ATP Challenger Tour system with a prize pool of $37,520, which is much bigger than a ITF Men’s World Tennis tournament. The event is taking place in Bangkok from Aug. 22 to 29.

Thanks to his current world ranking (328th), Nam did not need to play the qualifiers and got a direct slot to the event.

In the first round, the draw brought Nam to a match with Kelly (490th in world rankings). The first set saw Nam edging out Kelly to win 6-4. But in the second, Kelly took advantage of his powerful and accurate lefty forehands to cause Nam a lot of trouble.

After one hour and 10 minutes of back and forth, the score in the second set was 6-6 and entered an intense tie-break, with Nam winning 7-4.

Overall, the Vietnam’s number one tennis player won 2-0 against Kelly after two hours and five minutes.

In the next round, Nam will face the eighth seed Illya Marchenko. This will be a tough challenge since Marchenko is a veteran and has much more experience than Nam. The 35-year-old reached 49th in world rankings in 2016 and now stands at 308th, which is 20 places higher than Nam.