Jan-Lennard Struff
Here’s everything you need to know about the concept of ‘Lucky Loser’ in Tennis
The concept of ‘Lucky Loser’ has been a burning topic ever since Jan-Lennard Struff made it to the finals of the Madrid Masters 1000 tournament. Initially, Germany’s Struff didn’t even make it to the main draw of the competition after losing in the second round of qualifying to Aslan Karatsev.
However, he is now in the final of the tournament and is scheduled to take on Carlos Alcaraz in the summit clash after qualifying as the ‘Lucky Loser’ – so here’s everything you need to know about it.
A ‘lucky loser’ is a player who lost in the qualifying rounds of a particular tournament but got into the main draw following a player’s withdrawal for illness, injury or whatever reason it may be. However, the process is not as easy as it looks because there are multiple losers in the qualifiers and choosing the ‘Lucky Loser’ is a bit of a complicated task. The timing of the concerned player’s withdrawal decides which qualifying losers get the chance to gain entry to the main draw as a lucky loser.
However, if the withdrawal occurs after the qualifying rounds are complete, then the highest-ranked player who lost in the final round of qualifying gets entry into the main draw as a lucky loser. Similarly, if the withdrawal occurs before the qualifying rounds are complete, then the two highest-ranked losers in the final round of qualifiers are put into a random draw for the main-draw spot.
There have been instances of lucky losers winning ATP and WTA tournaments in the past. Most tennis fans would remember that Andrey Rublev achieved that feat relatively recently in 2017 at Umag. Italy’s Marco Cecchinato did the same at the Hungarian Open in 2018 while Kwon Soon-Woo achieved this unique feat earlier this year at Adelaide International 2 – a tournament which is treated as a warm-up event leading to the Australian Open. However, there has been no such instance of a Lucky Loser winning a Major or Masters title in the history of Tennis.
Jan-Lennard Struff will attempt to become the first lucky loser to win an ATP Masters 1000 title when he faces top seed Carlos Alcaraz in the Madrid Open final later today. He has been on a fairy-tale run after he made it to the main draw of the tournament as a lucky loser.
Struff beat Lorenzo Sonego in his first match of the main draw and followed it up with a commendable victory against No.32 seed Ben Shelton. He then got the better of Pedro Cachin before pulling off a major upset against 4th seed Stefanos Tsitsipas in the quarter-finals. He came back from a set down to win his semi-final clash against Aslan Karatsev and set up a final clash against the top seed Carlos Alcaraz.
Struff has been in really good touch, and it remains to be seen if he can script history tonight.
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