By Damian Kust
At the end of 2022, I did an off-season thread on Twitter where I named 26 players I thought were likely to break the top 100 in 2023. The time has come to review the selections and see how I did. Can we learn anything from this experiment?
Correct picks (where they started the season > career-high achieved in 2023):
Christopher Eubanks (123 > 29)
Arthur Fils (251 > 36)
Matteo Arnaldi (134 > 41)
Aleksandar Vukic (130 > 48)
Alexander Shevchenko (154 > 48)
Yibing Wu (116 > 54)
Fabian Marozsan (173 > 61)
Luca Van Assche (139 > 63)
Yosuke Watanuki (145 > 72)
Dominic Stricker (118 > 88)
Facundo Diaz Acosta (191 > 93)
Jurij Rodionov (122 > 100)
It all depends how you look at it. My list had 26 players, as that was the number of Top 100 debuts in 2022, although as I suspected there weren’t quite as many in 2023 (despite the increased amount of Challenger Tour points on offer), which produced just 21 new entrants to the top 100. And hey, 12/21 looks better than 12/26. Who was an impressive selection and who was obvious?
Wu and Van Assche I considered absolute locks — they had few points to defend in the first half of 2022 and had very strong runs in the second half. I’m pretty sure anyone would have Stricker on their list as well, that top 100 debut was eagerly anticipated.
The others actually weren’t that simple. I didn’t think Wimbledon quarterfinalist Eubanks was going to get quite this high, but his game has become increasingly complete. Arnaldi was quite a trendy player after the NextGen Finals, even if the extent of his 2023 improvement was far greater than anyone could have foreseen. And Rodionov had been around that 101-150 range for a while and it was a matter of when, not if, but his top 100 stay ended up being extremely short.
We still have six remaining and I feel like these were my best shouts. Fils might seem obvious in hindsight, but he was around 250th in the rankings at year-end in 2022 and I definitely felt like I was leading the way in hyping him up. I actually believed this was going to be a different season for him with Challenger Tour dominance and a Top 100 debut later in the year, but he just made plenty of main tour impact almost right away.
Vukic was a correct analysis of his ranking situation and how he was likely to make the jump if he could stay healthy. Smart scheduling from him more or less clinched it in the South Korean swing. With Watanuki, we sort of had seen this story before with him peaking in the Asian Challengers at the end of the year and not following it up. But this time you could see the quality of his play was just too high for that to happen again.
Shevchenko and Marozsan weren’t getting too much hype, but they are right now. (Recall Marozsan’s amazing upset of Carlos Alcaraz in Rome, which sparked hyperbolic takes about the magnitude of the shock.) The latter convinced me with his Bratislava performance at the end of 2022, especially as at the time he was still playing 90% of his events on clay. Shevchenko is a nice story for me as I vividly remember seeing him live in his Challenger debut in July 2021 (I actually hadn’t watched him even on stream before then) and just instantly seeing obvious top 100 potential. It took me a while to convince others about that though — maybe he’s just one of these guys you had to see in person to get the full picture.
Was Diaz Acosta my best selection? Maybe, it remains to be seen how much impact he can produce at tour-level. It was definitely one of the bolder predictions, but I started feeling really good about this pick when he almost beat Norrie during the Golden Swing. He went on a rampage on the Challenger Tour after that.
Top 100 debutants who weren’t on my list (where they started the season > career-high achieved in 2023):
Max Purcell (220 > 40)
Sebastian Ofner (193 > 43)
Rinky Hijikata (164 > 70)
Borna Gojo (144 > 71)
Thiago Seyboth Wild (418 > 74)
Alexandre Muller (160 > 76)
Alex Michelsen (600 > 91)
Liam Broady (163 > 93)
Flavio Cobolli (171 > 95)
Nine misses seems like a lot, but I feel like I can get a pass for a lot of these. Gojo should have been on my list, but I figured he was more likely to stay around the 110-150 ranking range. That was wrong and if you feel like that about a player, you should probably include him in a list like this anyway.
I expected to trash myself for not picking Ofner, but now that I see where he was at the beginning of 2023 it’s actually not a huge blunder. He did have a nice window to earn points at the beginning of the season, but still had to massively top any of his previous results to get there.
There’s no way anyone would include Seyboth Wild, Michelsen, or Purcell on their lists. The Brazilian was coming off a couple of horrible seasons and he did well to put it all back together in 2023, including the headline-making upset of Medvedev at Roland Garros. Michelsen was already committed to college and the Shelton-ish run to break the Top 100, especially at 19, wasn’t to be expected. Purcell decided to focus more on singles despite amazing doubles results and instantly got the reward in a way that I couldn’t have imagined.
Hijikata and Muller were both in the gettable range I think, but neither was considered a player with enough explosive potential to make it. Amazing development for both as I considered the Australian to be a potential Top 100 prospect only in a few years, and Muller wasn’t on my radar whatsoever. Hijikata probably should have made my list, I’m fine with not selecting Muller.
Broady had been somewhat close to breaking the Top 100 for years, but never actually found enough to pull it off. Should I have included him? Not sure, but when he won Vilnius in February I was already regretting my decision not to. Cobolli was one of the last players I decided not to write about and I am a little angry that I missed him. That’s because I still believed in him quite a lot, I just didn’t feel like the bounce-back campaign would be this good and thought of him as a likely top 100 debut for 2024 or 2025.
Near misses (where they started the season/career-high achieved):
Aleksandar Kovacevic (158 > 101)
Hamad Medjedovic (255 > 102)
Francesco Passaro (119 > 108)
Zsombor Piros (162 > 109)
Otto Virtanen (175 > 109)
Zizou Bergs (129 > 112)
Luca Nardi (135 > 115)
I’m counting the players who were ranked inside the Top 120 as near misses. I guess that automatically includes Passaro and that’s a flaw of this system, but he did get his ranking up to 108 so it’s fine. This could have gone a little smoother for me, especially as Kovacevic was literally waiting for the result of one match to see if he gets in (on the other side of the planet though, it wasn’t in his hands) and Medjedovic played a deciding tie-break to get there, which he lost.
It’s especially a shame with Medjedovic, because he would have been one of my best picks, if not the best. He had a long losing streak to end 2022, but I just felt like with his brutal power he must be on the verge of figuring it out soon. I would totally pick him to break the top 100 in 2024 now.
Kovacevic could get slightly tricky as he’s got two Challenger titles to defend in February/March. But if he can save some of these points, then there’s plenty of time to make up in the spring where he didn’t win a single match for three months last year. So I think I’d still pick him for 2024, just with less confidence than Medjedovic.
Passaro was such a letdown after a brilliant 2022. I thought he had to get there before the summer, but he just didn’t grab anything huge on hard courts and then also failed to repeat his clay achievements. He ends 2023 outside the top 200 and I actually wouldn’t pick him for 2024 now, although a top 100 debut is still very much a possibility in the future, just maybe not tomorrow.
Piros had some chances and he did extremely well in the spring, but truth be told at year-end he just wasn’t playing top 100 tennis anymore. Virtanen started so well, but then had a similar summer like Kovacevic and actually didn’t recover. While these two could make it in 2024, the Hungarian will have so much to defend around April. I trust Virtanen more next year, but it isn’t really related to his ranking situation, I just think he’ll put it together at some point (those Davis Cup performances!). Piros doesn’t quite have the same ceiling, so it’s a bit trickier.
Bergs and Nardi I would absolutely follow up on and pick them for 2024. The Italian had a rough campaign, but started firing again at the end of the season and I think he’ll be there by the spring with not much to defend early. I even said in my write-up that Bergs just needs a fully healthy year. He didn’t get that, but is back in good shape in November and I think it’s again more a question of injuries than quality.
Wrong (where they started the season/career-high achieved):
Leandro Riedi (157 > 126)
Gabriel Diallo (227 > 130)
Lukas Klein (136 > 133)
Mattia Bellucci (153 > 142)
Juncheng Shang (192 > 149)
Adrian Andreev (189 > 183)
Nicolas Alvarez Varona (284 > 219)
These are the players I picked who didn’t make it and didn’t really come all that close. Riedi kicked off the season with a fantastic run in Canberra, which made me feel like it was going to work out for him. He had some injury issues though and then never found that level again, eventually dropping far down. Would I pick him again for 2024? Not sure, but with his hit-or-miss playstyle it’s always going to be a question of finding the confidence and just firing up for a couple of months. He’s not lacking the quality to get there.
I knew Diallo was quite risky as his game still felt raw, but he just wasn’t defending anything in the first half due to playing college in 2022, so there was lots to gain. He actually did okay for his first full pro season, I can’t be disappointed with the pick at all.
Klein has lots to regret as he had 23 points to defend until May and just didn’t take the opportunity. He started playing better again in the fall so I’m hopeful for 2024, but a lot more cautious this time. Admittedly, he was one of three players I considered absolute locks for this year, along with Wu and Van Assche.
Bellucci had a nightmare first half of the year, but maybe I’d pick him again in 2024 because his shot selection was back later on and the game is still good enough. Shang had mono and at various points of the year was physically spent in every third set. I think a healthy version of him makes the top 100 soon, but we’ll see if we actually get that this time.
Andreev struggled with an injury at the start of the season, but overall only had a few flashes and I think I wouldn’t include him for 2024. He might make the Top 100 at some point in the future, but the development of a more aggressive forehand seems to have less of an impact on his potential than I thought it would. Alvarez Varona missed the majority of the year due to an injury, so I can’t really judge that pick and I think it’s too early in his comeback to think of him as a potential top 100 debut in 2024. He was one of my bolder selections anyway.
All in all, I was expecting to be a lot more down on my picks as 12/21 doesn’t seem like a great success rate. But after looking at it more closely, I don’t think I had a big blunder besides Gojo (maybe Cobolli?) and even these of my selections that didn’t get near the top 100 usually had some sort of physical issues that stopped them from giving it a better go. I had a lot of fun doing the list, following it throughout the year, and also writing this review.
Popcorn Tennis 