INDONESIAN male tennis player Christopher Rungkat wants to join the ATP Challenger to achieve his target of returning to the Grand Slam tournament.
This was conveyed by the man who is familiarly called Christo after winning the ITF M25 Taipei doubles with Thai tennis player Pruchya Isaro.
Christo expressed his desire to play in the ATP Challenger with Isaro after their second title of the year.
“In the future, we will play together again with Isaro, hopefully we can play together until the end of this season,” said Christo via instant message, Sunday (4/8).
“But, I want to play Challenger, so hopefully both of them can enter Challenger. But if not, I have to look for another player who can enter the Challenger drawing,” he continued.
Christo’s victory on the hardcourts of the Taipei Tennis Center was the third title of the season for the 34-year-old.
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He won his first trophy of the year at the ITF M25 Chennai, India, in late January, alongside Filipino Francis Casey Alcantara.
Christo and Isaro won their second title at the ITF M15 Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand, in late February. The M25 Taipei title is the pair’s second trophy of the year.
Christo/Isaro also showed good performance by becoming runners-up at the ATP Challenger Kigali, Rwanda, in early March. They lost to the Dutch-French pair Max Houkes/Clement Tabur in the final.
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The Indonesian/Thailand pair will also return to appear in the second week of the ITF M25 Taipei.
“There’s still the second series next week. Hopefully the results can be maximized again, and can be a good provision,” said Christo.
“If I win again, I can enter around 290 rankings, and Isaro can probably be in the small 300s or so. With a ranking like that it’s possible
“can still enter the Challenger in China,” he added.
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The ATP Challenger became a ‘ladder’ for Christo to gradually climb the rankings until he finally got the opportunity to take part in the major tournament.
“I want to play as long as possible, have a career as long as possible,” said Christo.
“There’s still fire, if you win there’s still butterfly, as long as there’s still that I’ll keep playing. If later on, winning is like nothing, then maybe that’s the time (to stop).”
“I love competing, and I still feel sad when I lose,” said the winner of a hat-trick of gold medals in the SEA Games mixed doubles with Aldila Sutjiadi.
“One of my motivations is that I want to play a Grand Slam again with my kids watching. Even though I have played a Grand Slam before, but
I want my son to be able to play with my dad. One Grand Slam, which is peaceful,” he concluded. (Ant/Z-1)
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