By Chris Oddo | Sunday January 31, 2021
After claiming the Quimper Challenger title, Sebastian Korda is poised to make his Top 100 debut on Monday.
Photo Source: Getty
Sebastian Korda’s plan to skip the Australian Open and grind out some matches on the challenger tour this February appears to be coming together.
The American, who reached his first career final at Delray Beach in January, has claimed the Quimper Challenger title, rolling past Slovakia’s Filip Horansky, 6-1 6-1.
Korda lost the first game of the match before reeling off the next 11 games. He closed the match with a hold to love to claim his second ATP challenger title in 49 minutes.
Korda will rise to a projected 88 in Monday’s ATP rankings, making his Top 100 debut.
A Rising Star:
Korda has really stepped into the limelight in the last nine months. Last month at Delray Beach he told reporters how much he valued the experience of receiving a wild card into the Western and Southern Open and US Open in 2020, and later in the year he showed how much progress he had made when he reached the round of 16 at Roland-Garros.
"I think still the biggest thing for me was that I had a wild card from the USTA into Cincinnati and the US Open, kind of just being in the bubble there for two, three weeks and practicing with the guys and being around them and feeling more comfortable, because I always knew I had the game it was just about me, it was just a few little things here and there and just kind of feeling comfortable in my own skin out there," he said.
Korda's plan is to play a few more challenger events in Europe and then try to enter the main draw at ATP events in either Marseille or Rotterdam. He then wants to cross the ocean again to play Acapulco and Miami.
Having already reached his goal of breaking the Top 100, there's no telling how high Korda can climb in 2021. Everything he is doing, both on and off the court, points to a bright future. His game is well-rounded, and he hits a clean, authoritative ball. He's mentally unflappable, and off the court he's benefitting from a newfound connection with American legend Andre Agassi, in addition to the support he already gets from his father Petr, a former World No.2, and his mother Regina, a formidable WTA talent back in the day.
If there's any deficiency in Korda's game at the moment it would be the fact that he hasn't quite grown into his body yet and will need time to adapt to the physical rigors of life on the tour, especially in best-of-five matches at majors.
"I think everything is just still kind of a process of getting my body [in shape],” he said after losing the final in Delray Beach to Hubert Hurkacz. “As you can see my body is not 100 percent there when I need it. So it's always every single day kind of just baby steps in a way and kind of building myself closer to hopefully play some good tennis - and hopefully my body can keep up with the good tennis and I will keep getting these opportunities."