![]() Should Draper oust the Portuguese player he will face second seed Griekspoor in the second round.Īlternate Dominic Thiem got into the main draw thanks to withdrawals and will face Arthur Rinderknech in the opening round with the winner going on to meet eighth seed Botic van de Zandschulp.Ĭoric sheds the points he won in claiming last season’s Cincy title but still holds the No 1 seeding and a first round bye. There are still some intriguing first round matches at the Winston-Salem Open with Jack Draper set to feature and take on Portugal’s Nuno Borges in the first round. With the US Open following hot on the heels of the event in North Carolina most of the top players have opted to head straight to New York to begin preparations for the year’s final Grand Slam.īeing a 48-player main draw, the top 16 seeds all enjoy a bye into the second round of the ATP 250 event. Tallon Griekspoor, who will be the world No 25 next week, will be the player who holds the strongest position according to the rankings. Top seed Borna Coric is set to tumble 13 places down the rankings and won’t be the highest-ranked player in the field for the event. With his ITF title in Egypt, along with everything else he has accomplished, Lee is doing just that.The Winston-Salem Open will get underway on Monday with no top 20 talents in the field. “I’ve been confident in myself since I decided to be a tennis player,” says Lee, who has reached the final rounds of qualifying at the Australian Open (20) and Roland Garros (2018).īut for the fans he sees cheering him on from the stands, he has one request: “I hope that they recognize me as just the player Duckhee Lee, rather than a player with a hearing problem.” In 2019, at the Winston-Salem Open, Lee became the first deaf player to win an ATP main-draw match. He’s experienced success on the ATP Challenger Tour, notching wins over established players like Vasek Pospisil, Dudi Sela and Lukas Rosol. He played his first event on the ITF Pro Circuit when he was 14. Slowly and steadily, Lee has proven his doubters wrong. Hearing the ball contact the opponent’s strings can enhance reaction time, trigger a split step and inform the kind of spin at play. ![]() 3 in the world in the ITF junior rankings, some coaches and contemporaries doubted he could succeed in the pros without the help of auditory cues. It wasn’t long before Lee was dominating the South Korean junior tennis circuit. When I grab the racquet, I feel confident.” “Since that day, I feel really happy and excited when I step on the court. “It was really fun, and also the first time that I became so competitive that I did not want to lose to anyone,” Lee said, recounting his first tennis experience as a 7-year-old. If he had athletic talent, tennis could become his livelihood. The inability to hear and speak clearly limited Lee’s longterm job prospects in his native South Korea. Tennis seemed like an option not only for its individual nature, but also for its professional possibilities. When they considered athletic options for Lee, his parents quickly crossed team sports off the list-communication would be too difficult. ![]() They withdrew him from his school for the deaf around the time he started grade school in an effort to fully immerse him in the hearing world. As he grew up, his parents, Park Mi-ja and Lee Sang-jin, taught their firstborn son to read lips instead of teaching him sign language. It sometimes gives me disadvantages, but it has never discouraged me.”ĭoctors diagnosed Lee as deaf when his mother brought him in for testing as a toddler. “Because I’ve never heard before, I can’t imagine how I would play if I could,” Lee told Tennis Magazine. ![]() He relies on his eye sight and anticipation skills on the court to compensate, and has more than succeeded in doing so. 130 and a 3-3 record in tour-level matches-than his disability: Lee is deaf. The title went to Duckhee Lee, less known for his career achievements-currently 426th in the ATP rankings, with a career-high rank of No. But the lower-level ITF event may have boasted the most compelling champion of all, so much so that we have to talk about it days later. So casual and diehard fans alike could be forgiven if they weren't paying attention to the M15 Sharm ElSheikh tournament in Sharm ElSheikh, Egypt. There was no shortage of compelling champions this past weekend, and this week's slate is loaded on both tours.
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