Challenger Traralgon - Castelnuovo an unfairly priced underdog

Penultimate Tournament in Australia

The ATP Challenger tour comes back to Australia one last time this year. There will be two more tournaments in Traralgon and Playford the upcoming two weeks. The field in Traralgon has Japanese Yasutaka Uchiyama and Tatsuma Ito as the top seeds. Overall, the field is relatively weak and you will come across some names the regular tennis fan might have never heard of. I will preview one of these matches, namely the one between Wishaya Trongcharoenchaikul from Thailand and Luca Castelnuovo from Switzerland.

Tricky Name, Tricky Year

The Thai with the tricky name had a tough year so far. Sitting inside the top 500 all year last year, his ranking dropped to around 650 this summer. Trongcharoenchaikul was fighting injury all season and had to give a walkover or retire mid-match six times since March. Even after his last retirement in August, he didn't show the greatest form, losing to Jeong and Musialek, both ranked outside of the top 1000 before cracking to Crnokrak, who's ranked around 800 in the world.

In his two tournaments in October, he lost to Tristan Schoolkate and Maverick Banes. These losses aren't that horrible with 18-year-old Schoolkate slowly starting to show his talent on the pro tour and Banes being a struggling yet still capable player. However, Trongcharoenchaikul didn't manage to win a set in all these five losses and apart from a third set tiebreak win over Vladyslav Orlov, none of his wins have been notable.

Capable Castelnuovo

His opponent today will be Luca Castelnuovo from Switzerland, a left-handed player who is playing the same kind of tournaments. After beating Renta Tokuda and losing to Goncalo Oliveira and Luke Saville on the Challenger tour, he went back to play ITF events in China and Australia this September and October. These matches on the Challenger tour have been of importance for his progress though and he was competing well. Tokuda, although struggling late this year, isn't an easy player to beat for guys like Trongcharoenchaikul or Castelnuovo. The Swiss' losses against Oliveira (4-6 4-6) and Saville (5-7 7-6 5-7) have been rather close as well and raise hope.

Just as Trongcharoenchaikul, Castelnuovo played Schoolkate and Orlov in his last two tournaments. Other than the Thai, he was able to keep it close with Schoolkate, only losing in a third set tiebreak. He also beat Orlov before losing to Dayne Kelly two weeks ago.

Although you cannot really compare these results, they show that the gap between the two players can't be that big. And there are a couple of more facts that hint towards the underdog here, be it that Trongcharoenchaikul has been injured for the most part of the year, the complexity of playing a lefty or the unnoticed rise of Castelnuovo. Altogether, I do not see the Swiss as the underdog in this one at all and will bet him to win the match at 2.69 odds with Pinnacle who also pay out on retirements after the first set is completed.