Hyeon Chung struggles on return to Challenger tennis

Korean tennis player Hyeon Chung made a return to the ATP Challenger Tour on Monday at the Taipei OEC Open held in Taipei City, Taiwan. It was Chung's first appearance in the main draw of a Challenger event since June last year.

The 28-year-old, who has been ranked as high as number 19 in the world, is currently ranked at 1447 in the ATP rankings after spending much time away from the tour with injuries. With such a low ranking, he would not normally have been able to enter the main draw of this Challenger 125 tournament, but was able to compete courtesy of a wild card awarded to him by the tournament organisers.

Chung made a return to professional tennis last month in Japan on the ITF Tour, which is the lowest tier of professional tennis. The first tournament he played was in Sapporo at the Uchiyama Cup which, coincidentally, is a tournament founded by Yasutaka Uchiyama, the man he would face in the first round in Taipei. That tournament in Sapporo ended in a first-round loss for Chung to an unranked 16-year-old. The Korean was certainly hoping for some better fortune in Taipei, but he drew one of the toughest opponents he could have faced. Uchiyama is the tournament's 7th seed and currently sits at 139 in the ATP rankings. At 32 years of age, he is very much an experienced player at the Challenger level, having won seven Challenger titles in total, including two just this year. Given his ability and recent good form, he was always going to present a very tough test for Chung under the circumstances.

The match started just about as badly as it could have for Chung. He struggled to make any winners and it was very much an error-strewn first set for him. There might have been concerns before the match about how he would serve, given that he previously altered his service motion as a result of a recurrent back injury. However, even his groundstrokes from the baseline, normally such a strong point of his game, were way below par. Point after point finished with a Chung shot going long or wide. It was clear that Chung wasn't yet nearly sharp enough to deal with the quality and speed of hitting of a player like Uchiyama, and his Japanese opponent quickly took a 6-0 lead.

The second set was an improvement. It almost had to be. Chung started to grow in confidence from the baseline. His speed of ball was picking up and he was making fewer errors. Some of the points he won were genuinely impressive, and perhaps a small reminder of the kind of baseline hitting and speed that helped him become the highest-ranked Korean player of all time. However, after a poor service game that saw him lose a break, he still didn't have enough quality to break back, and Uchiyama ended up a deserved winner, taking the second set 6-3.

Chung's performance was a sad reminder of how difficult it can be to return to the tour after extended periods out through injury. This is a player who was once tipped to go to the very top of the game, to the top 10; and perhaps to even be top 5 or a slam winner. With hindsight it's rather incredible to think that this was the same player who was the champion of the inaugural Next Gen ATP Finals in 2017, where he beat Andrey Rublev (twice) and Daniil Medvedev, two players of his age who went on reach the top 5 in the world and, in the latter case, become number 1 and the US Open champion. It's even more astounding to think that he beat Medvedev, Zverev and Djokovic, in consecutive matches, on his run to the semifinals at the Australian Open the following year.

Chung has now played five matches since returning last month, and only won two of them, both at the ITF level. Of course, it's still early in this latest comeback attempt, but it doesn't provide much hope that this comeback by the former top-20 player will be more successful than last year's. But is it all doom and gloom? The one positive, perhaps, is that he has looked more comfortable with his service motion. He is serving with greater fluidity and is making fewer double faults. And as mentioned before, he has shown glimpses of the baseline hitting and athleticism that brought him so much success. But only glimpses... Perhaps at this moment in time the Challenger level is simply too much of a step up for him. But does Chung want to grind it out at the lowest tier and try to build his ranking? Does his body have what it takes to do so?

Whatever the case, he will continue on the Challenger tour next week in his home country, where he's expected to take a wild card into the Challenger event in Seoul. He will certainly be hoping the draw will be kinder to him this time around.

Source: OEC Open Instagram ©