Posted by Peter Bodo, TENNIS.com
Let's relax our taboo on mentioning tennis and any form of gambling in the same sentence to note that the ATP men's results this weekend were a little bit like a Daily Double that ended up paying $50,000 on a $2 bet. What were the odds that Sergiy Stakhovsky (ranked No. 209) and Steve Darcis (No. 81) would emerge as the winners at two of the three main tour events?
It's funny -- people still get all haughty and snotty about Anna Kournikova, who, like Paris Hilton, became a huge celebrity without ever winning a WTA singles title. But Kournikova won a doubles Grand Slam, made the Wimbledon semis, and was a legitimate (the numbers don't lie) top-10 player for a fair spell. In Darcis and Stakhovsky, we have two guys who have won ATP main-tour events, yet Darcis has barely broken the double-figure ranking mark, and Stakhovsky hasn't seen the sunny side of No. 200 yet.
Actually, on Sunday in Memphis, Darcis won his second ATP title. He bagged his first one in Amersfoort last year, in what was just his second main-tour event. He won Amersfoort after qualifying, which is exactly what Stakhovsky pulled off in Zagreb on Sunday.
But Stakhovsky went Darcis one better -- he only got into Zagreb as a "lucky loser." Sergiy was about to blow town with the $500 check he received as a loser in the last round of qualifying when he learned that Michael Llodra had pulled out of Zagreb, opening a slot for him. The rest, as they say, is history. Stakhovsky was only the fifth LL ever to win the whole shootin' match; the previous person to do it was Christian Miniussi in 1991.
All this got me thinking of other players -- let's call them the Unusual Suspects -- who managed to win one or more main-tour events even if they were doomed to toil in very un-Kournikova-like obscurity for most of their days. Here are a few that came to mind:
1. Gilles Simon won two tournaments last year (Marseille and Bucharest), even though he was barely inside the top 50 at the start of the year.
2. In 2005, Mardy Fish was ranked a few rungs lower (at No. 227) than Stakhovsky was last week, but barely into April he won Houston.
3. Wayne Arthurs won his only career singles title at Scottsdale in 2005, quite a feat given the popularity of that tournament and the fact that Arthurs was barely inside the top 100 (he finished 2004 at No. 97).
4. Castellon, Spain's very own Santiago Ventura won his lone singles title at Casablanca in 2004, even though his ranking at the start of the year was an astronomical 413. It would fall as low as 384 again by the end of 2006.
5. South African Wesley Moodie, who never in his career broke into the top 50, won the prestigious Tokyo event in October 2005, beating Mario Ancic in the final. It was Moodie's only career singles title.
6. And here's a bonus for you old-timers: Remember the Hungarian player, Balazs Taroczy? He was a cut above most of the guys mentioned thus far, winning 13 career titles, but get this: He won six of those, in consecutive years starting in 1982, at Hilversum.
Can you say, six-peat?
Peter Bodo
