Athlete of the Week

Men’s
tennis in Romania has been, for several years now, at a much lower level than
women’s tennis. Whereas in the WTA ranking we have 4 athletes among the world’s
top 100, with men Romania has only one presence among the top 300. Nicholas
David Ionel, a student of the former great Romanian player Andrei Pavel, is
currently ranked 227th ATP. Between the 300th and 400th
places we have 3 other Romanians: Filip Jianu, ranked 319th, Cezar Crețu,
382 and Marius Copil, 383.

Florin Orban, 06.12.2022, 12:05

Men’s
tennis in Romania has been, for several years now, at a much lower level than
women’s tennis. Whereas in the WTA ranking we have 4 athletes among the world’s
top 100, with men Romania has only one presence among the top 300. Nicholas
David Ionel, a student of the former great Romanian player Andrei Pavel, is
currently ranked 227th ATP. Between the 300th and 400th
places we have 3 other Romanians: Filip Jianu, ranked 319th, Cezar Crețu,
382 and Marius Copil, 383.

Two of
these players are standing out these days thanks to notable performances in
international tournaments. Two weeks ago, Nicholas David Ionel reached the
quarter-finals of the challenger tournament in Yokkaichi, Japan, a competition
in which Filip Jianu stopped in the eighth-finals stage. In the doubles
competition, they reached the semi-finals together. Filip Jianu then flew to
Turkey, where on Sunday he won the ITF tournament in Antalya, and Radio România
International designated him Athlete of the Week.

In Turkey,
Jianu, seed no 1, defeated the Dutch Ryan Nijboer, 6-4, 6-2 in the first round.
In the round of 16, he beat Turkey’s Sarp Agabigun, 6-1, 6-0 and then in the
quarter-finals he outplayed Uzbekistan’s Maxim Shin, 6-1, 6-3. In the semis, the
Romanian moved past the Austrian David Pichler 6-1, 6-2, and won the final
against Montenegro’s Rrezart Cungu 6-2, 6-4. This was Jianu’s 5th ITF
title, and the first one this year.

Filip Jianu
was born in Bucharest on September 18, 2001, and is one of the main members of
Romania’s Davis Cup team. In the juniors’ ranking put together by the
International Tennis Federation in 2019, he came out 5th. That same
year, he was included in the ATP ranking and moved up slowly, but steadily. He
finished 397th in 2020, and his best ranking in 2021 was 317. This August,
he saw his best performance so far, number 284 in the world. (AMP)