Ivo Karlovic and the Top 100: Only Federer and Lopez are better
Ivo Karlovic will also finish 2019 among the top 100 tennis players in the world - and once again it was extremely tight.
by Florian Goosmann
last edit:
Dec 22, 2019, 09:41 am
Hardly a year has passed in which Ivo Karlovic was not mentioned in a list with Ken Rosewall, Jimmy Connors and Co. "The first player since" is a welcome entry, because Karlovic - now slim 40 year old - draws attention as an oldie of the tour again and again.
Even if the past two years have been rather mixed for the Croatian. At the beginning of 2017 Karlovic was still in the top 20, but then motivation problems became apparent with "Dr. Ivo", who often had to leave his family (Mrs. Alvi and the kids Jada and Noah) alone "They could not travel that often, and when i left it was terrible. They were sad, I was sad - and I just didn't want to do it that often anymore. “ The worst moment : 2018 in Roland Garros,“ where I just wanted to go home. I felt disgusting, the racket in hand at all to hold. And losing didn't hurt as much as usual. "
Karlovic 2018 and 2019 with a strong finish
In autumn 2018, Karlovic, who slipped to 138th place at the time, set an ultimatum: He would try five qualifying tournaments to qualify for the main draw of the Australian Open. If he couldn't do it, he would step down. Karlovic grabbed it, took 13 wins in 17 matches, he also crowned himself as the oldest winner in a Challenger tournament.
After a strong start to 2019 with the final entry in Pune and the round of 16 in Indian Wells, Karlovic left points behind, at the end of the year he flew out of the top 100 again and grabbed the re-entry just at the last tournament appearance of the year, where he reached the final .
Karlovic: 17 times in a row at the end of the year in the top 100
In addition to the direct qualification for Melbourne again, Karlovic also managed to maintain an impressive series: Since the end of the 2003 game year, Karlovic has always been in the top 100 at the end of the year, a proud 17 times in a row. A series in which only the active players Roger Federer (20 times) and Feliciano Lopez (18 times) are ahead of him.
With Karlovic, however, it was often extremely tight - also due to injury: he ended the 2006 season in 98th place, in 2011 he slipped to 211th place in the meantime, but was number 56 again at the end of the year. In 2012, he ended in 100th place In 2018, he would actually have been only 101st place, had not a rule change in his favor had worked : Due to the newly introduced (and now discontinued) ITF ranking list, Ugo Humbert in front of him was given the counters that he got at the ITF tournaments had subtracted from the ATP ranking. Karlovic benefited.
Karlovic ends the 2019 season in 95th place and starts the new season with the qualification in Doha. Karlovic should score well here: from the previous year, 150 points from his move to the final in Pune should be defended.