He had never won an ATP match and was champion: the incredible week of Van Rijthoven, who beat Medvedev at ‘s-Hertogenbosch

Each season, the ATP grass tour usually holds surprises. But, until this Sunday, none had been comparable to what Dutch Tim Van Rijthoven achieved: at 25 and 205th in the standings, he received an invitation to participate this week in the ‘s-Hertogenbosch tournament, he had never won a game and had become champion beating in the final the Russian Daniil Medvedev, 2nd in the standings.

Van Rijthoven celebrated his first title by winning 6-4 and 6-1 halves in an hour and 5 minutes of play, his second time in an ATP event. The previous? We have to go back to the 2016 edition of Winston-Salem, when he entered the main draw as Lucky loser of here

Taking advantage of a wildcard at ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Van Rijthoven became the lowest-scoring ATP champion this season. Argentine Juan Manuel Cerúndolo won the title in front of his crowd in Cordoba when he was 335th, in 2021.

The truth is that the Dutchman, thanks to this victory, will make a spectacular leap in the update of the ranking on Monday to 106 or 107. That’s 99 more positions than at the beginning of this week.

Even more: no ‘oranje’ had won a title from Robin Haase onwards 2012 in Kitzbuhel, Austria, on brick dust.

Van Rijthoven’s dream week included streak wins Matthew Ebden, Taylor Fritz, Hugo Gaston, Felix Auger-Aliassime (first win on a Top Ten) and the final against Medvedev.

Despite his defeat, Medvedev will regain first place of the ATP ranking on the Serbian Novak Djokovic starting from Monday. The Russian was unable to transfer the broad and theoretical superiority he had over the Dutch to the board.

It may have been the 14th title for Medvedev, who He hasn’t been able to raise his record since his US Open victorylast September.

Nor will he win at Wimbledon, where he is excluded, like all his Russian and Belarusian compatriots, for the invasion of Ukraine by his country’s army.