‘Challenger level is about survival’: brutal reality of life below elite tennis

Maximilian Marterer lays out the lonely existence of the tour – ‘If I’m healthy, I spend 10, 15 weeks max [a year] at home.’ Photograph: Lintao Zhang/Getty Images for ITF

Less than a year after exiting the 2022 Wimbledon quarter-final on the All England Club’s pristine No 1 Court, Cristian Garín found himself 10,000 miles away on a hard court on the Pacific island of Nouméa, New Caledonia.

The Chilean, who had a career-high ranking of world No 17, had signed up for an ATP Challenger event, tennis’s second-tier tour, mostly attracting players outside the top 100, after a wrist injury forced him to miss two ATP Masters 1000 events. By January 2023, Garín sat at a precarious No 82.