True tennis fanatics find joy in sharing any random fact or record that they can recite from memory. The 2022 ATP Challenger Tour season held no shortage of historic moments that can be shared as your next trivia question.
After 11 months of nonstop tennis, ATPTour.com takes a deep dive into the facts and figures from the 2022 Challenger Tour season.
Halys Held Most Wins
For the second straight year, a Frenchman topped the Challenger match wins leaderboard. This season, Quentin Halys was nearly unstoppable as he collected a 43-10 record on the Challenger Tour.
The 26-year-old reached seven Challenger finals, including in Pau, Lille, and Ismaning, where he captured the title. Halys finished the year at a career-high 64 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings.
Player
W-L
Titles
Quentin Halys
43-10
3
Tomas Martin Etcheverry
40-16
1
Constant Lestienne
40-17
3
Title Leaders
Pedro Cachin and Jack Draper finished with a season-leading four Challenger titles. While the Argentine Cachin competed in seven finals, he was crowned champion in Madrid, Prague, Todi, and Santo Domingo. Draper’s early-season surge helped pave the path of his graduation to Tour-level tournaments and qualification for the Intesa Sanpaolo Next Gen ATP Finals. The Briton triumphed at the Forli-2, Forli-4, Forli-5, and Saint-Brieuc Challengers.
Teen Titans
Nine teenagers broke through to triumph at the Challenger level. China’s Shang Juncheng won the Lexington Challenger to become the youngest (17 years, 6 months) Challenger champion of 2022. The Beijing native is the youngest Chinese champion in Challenger Tour history. Luca Nardi and Dominic Stricker were the only teenagers to win multiple Challenger titles this season.
Other teen champions include Luca Van Assche, Holger Rune, Hamad Medjedovic, Francesco Maestrelli, Flavio Cobolli, and Zachary Svajda.
Biggest Movers To Top 100
Ben Shelton, who was a six-time Challenger finalist this year, led the way as one of the four biggest movers to the Top 100.
Player
Ranking Jump
Year-End 2021-2022
Titles
Ben Shelton
+471
568-97
3
Jack Draper
+217
259-42
4
Pedro Cachin
+201
258-57
4
Chun-hsin Tseng
+164
251-87
2
Title Leaders By Country
Players from 38 countries won titles this year. Argentines collected a historic 23 Challenger titles, which surpassed their own record for most titles by a country in a single season (20). French players, who combined for 22 titles, were not far behind.
Valentin Vacherot, who won the Nonthaburi Challenger, became the second player from Monaco to win a title and the first since 2004.
Country
Titles
Winners
Argentina
23
Cachin-4, Comesana-2, Ugo Carabelli-2, Bagnis-2, JM Cerundolo-2, Rodriguez Taverna-1, F Cerundolo-1, Etcheverry-1, Diaz Acosta-1, Coria-1, Mena-1, Bautista Torres-1, Ficovich-1, Kicker-1, Olivieri-1, Andreozzi-1
France
22
Lestienne-3, Halys-3, Bonzi-2, Grenier-2, Moutet-2, Barrere-2, Guinard-1, Furness-1, Rinderknech-1, Muller-1, Cazaux-1, Humbert-1, Gaston-1, Van Assche-1
Italy
16
Nardi-3, Cecchinato-2, Bellucci-2, Mager-1, Cobolli-1, Agamenone-1, Arnaldi-1, Pellegrino-1, Musetti-1, Maestrelli-1, Passaro-1, Brancaccio-1
United States
12
Shelton-3, Mmoh-2, Escobedo-1, Kudla-1, Sock-1, Nava-1, Svajda-1, Moreno de Alboran-1, Sandgren-1
ATP Tour & Challenger Tour Winners
Borna Coric and Holger Rune showed their dominance at the Challenger level and on the ATP Tour in 2022.
Coric, who won the Parma Challenger in June, upset three Top-10 players en route to winning the title in Cincinnati to become the first player since 1993 to win a Challenger and an ATP Masters 1000 title in the same season. And then it was the Danish teen’s turn in Bercy.
Rune, 19, claimed the Sanremo Challenger in April before rising to three Tour-level titles, including the ATP Masters 1000 event in Paris.
Four other players also were crowned champions at both levels: Yoshihito Nishioka, Marc-Andrea Huesler, Francisco Cerundolo, and Lorenzo Musetti.
Doubles Titles History
In the span of six months, British duo Julian Cash and Henry Patten went from scrambling to gain entry into Challenger tournaments to finishing the season with a record-setting 10 titles.
In May, Cash and Patten were ranked outside the Top 300 in the Pepperstone ATP Doubles Rankings. The former college standouts made quick progress as they collected titles on all three surfaces and surpassed the previous Challenger doubles titles record, eight, which was set in 2012 by twin brothers from Thailand, Sanchai and Sonchat Ratiwatana.
Fast Facts
A total of 52 players collected their maiden title this season. Shang, 17, was the youngest of the bunch while 28-year-old Alexander Ritschard was the oldest player to win his first title in 2022.
#NextGenATP stars lit up the Challenger Tour this year. Players born in 2001 or later combined for 40 titles.
A single-season record 22 players advanced through qualifying en route to capturing a Challenger title.
Longest final: Genaro Alberto Olivieri and Tomas Martin Etcheverry tied the record for the longest Challenger final. After three hours, 31 minutes, Olivieri defeated his countryman 6-7(3), 7-6(5), 6-3 to win the Montevideo Challenger.
Shortest final: Hamad Medjedovic needed just 48 minutes to down Zhang Zhizhen 6-1, 6-2 at the Luedenscheid Challenger.
Youngest final: Hungary’s Filip Misolic, 20, defeated 17-year-old Mili Poljicak to win the Zagreb Challenger. In Granby, 20-year-old Gabriel Diallo defeated Chinese teen Shang Juncheng in the championship match.
Oldest winner: Fernando Verdasco won the Monterrey Challenger to become the season’s oldest champion (38 years, 3 months). Only Ivo Karlovic has won a Challenger at an older age: 39 years, 7 months (2018 Calgary).
Four players saved at least one match point in a Challenger final: Wu Yibing (6) in Indianapolis, Jack Draper (4) at the Forli-5 event, Emilio Gomez (4) in Salinas, and Zizou Bergs (1) in Ilkley.
Guido Andreozzi became the lowest-ranked champion since 2000. The Argentine was No. 901 when he triumphed at the Temuco Challenger.
Ben Shelton became the youngest player in Challenger history to win three titles in as many weeks (Charlottesville, Knoxville, Champaign).
At the Orleans Challenger, Gregoire Barrere became the fifth player since 2010 to defeat four Top-100 players en route to a title.
Francisco and Juan Manuel Cerundolo became the first pair of brothers to win titles in back-to-back seasons.
A record-setting 184 tournaments were played across 38 countries.
The Tampere Open, which is the longest-running event on the Challenger Tour, became the first tournament to celebrate its 40-year anniversary.