Challenger circuit win in Jersey marks end to Jarkko Nieminen’s long dry spell on court

Title sees Finnish tennis #1 return to ATP top 100 club

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Finland’s top tennis export Jarkko Nieminen’s visit to the wrong side of 100th place on the ATP ranking lists looks to remain but a short mishap after all.
      Over the weekend Nieminen won the men’s ATP Challenger event at Les Ormes, Jersey, and is set to rise back to the right side of the critical watershed in the rankings.
      In the final Nieminen beat the Frenchman Stephane Robert 4–6, 6–1, 7–5, and collected the all-important ATP points, 75 of them.
      The prize money for the winner was a modest EUR 6,150, but right now Nieminen craves points more than anything else.
      “It feels particularly good to win here after all the adversities that I have gone through. I am also happy that I managed to get my game to pan out very well in this tournament”, Nieminen told the Finnish News Agency STT.
      He had a good and busy week all round, as he and his Finnish partner Henri Kontinen also made it through to the final of the men's doubles in Jersey, where they were beaten in three sets by the Danish-Australian partnership of Fredrik Nielsen and Joseph Sirianni
     
It seems that this time Nieminen’s slip to triple digits in the ATP rankings will not extend beyond five weeks in length. In the spring of 2005 Nieminen, who at best has been ranked 13th in the world, stayed outside the top 100 club for eight weeks, sinking as low as 142nd at one stage.
      This autumn Nieminen’s slide down in the rankings levelled off at 122.
     
At the start of the week Nieminen’s new ranking position is within the top 85. In the course of this autumn he will only lose the points from the Helsinki IPP Open of last year.
      Ranking position is important for a tennis professional, as it guarantees entry to competitions without having to qualify: the higher up the lists, the larger the competition that is open to the player.
      “It is great that trying and working hard is being rewarded once again. Surely this will mark a change of direction for me. I know that when I am fit I belong at the top”, Nieminen continued.
     
His season in 2009 has been hit several times by injuries, with the rot setting in first in Melbourne in February, when a forced early retirement caused him to lose nearly all the 500 points he had won the previous year at the Australian Open.
      In a week’s time Nieminen will play in the IPP Open, and before that in Bratislava this week. If he succeeds moderately in the home tournament he will maintain his ranking position until the end of the year.
     
In his career to date, the 28-year-old left-hander has won eight challenger tournaments and one ATP tour competition, in Auckland in January 2006. Nieminen’s most recent challenger competition win before this is from 2005 in Prostejov, in the Czech Republic.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Jarkko Nieminen slides 22 places after Australian Open retirement (10.2.2009)

Links:
  Jarkko Nieminen (Wikipedia)
  Jarkko Nieminen on the ATP pages

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