Lapentti, Nicholas

Nicholas's father is a former basketball player, Ecuadorian politician and former member of the legislative assembly of this South American state Nicholas Lapennti Corriona, his mother Maria Cecilia is the holder of the 1971 Miss Ecuador title. Nicholas is not the only professional tennis player in the family: his uncle, Andres Gomez , was among the top five players in the world in both singles and doubles, and the middle brother, Giovanni , as well as Andres and Nicholas, played for the Ecuadorian national team in the Cup Davis Ecuadorian's younger brother, Leonardo, was engaged in tennis, but he did not achieve any noticeable success in this game. ^[one]

Nicholas began playing tennis at the age of six, first taking a racket at the suggestion of his father to play on the beach.

Junior years

Lapentti showed himself quite vividly already during his career in senior junior tournaments: in 1992 he played for the first time at the local Grand Slam tournaments, and a year later he began to visit the later stages of various top tournaments more often - first in doubles and pulling up and results in personal tournaments. In 1994 (in his last season in the junior tour), the Ecuadorian reached the peak of his results: twice - on Roland Garros and US Open - he reached the semifinals of the Grand Slam single tournaments, and (together with the Brazilian Gustavo Guerten ) regularly played on Late stages of similar competitions in a pair, where he took two titles. In the late autumn, Lapentti ended his career at this age at the Orange Bowl , reaching two finals: a pair of Nicholas and Gustavo missed the title, and in solo the South Americans played the title, where Lapentti was stronger.

Adult career

Ecuadorian first tried himself in the procura at the age of 15, playing a series of entry-level competitions in South America. For some time, the experiences of games at a similar level were extremely small, and only in 1993, after the debut of the adult team in the Davis Cup , Nicholas began to appear more actively in the prosecutor. In the next few years, Lapentti gradually polished his game with a new level of rivals, tried himself twice in qualifying for adults in Grand Slam tournaments and gradually reached a higher level of results. The transition was quite unexpected: after a series of tournaments on the “satellites” Nicholas announced the qualification of the Colombian ATP main tour and not only passed it, but eventually won the main title, beating the fifth player of the seed, Chilean Marcelo Rios . This result allowed Lapentti to rise from the fourth hundred rating to the middle of the second in a short time.

Gradually getting used to stable games at a higher level, Nicholas will debut in the main draw of adult Grand Slam tournaments in January of next year, and in March he will be in the next single classification classification. In the autumn of the same year, Ecuadorian manages to play for the first time in the finals of the pair competition in the framework of the ATP main tour: all the same in Bogota . In 1997-98, the Ecuadorian more and more stabilizes his results in singles, fixing himself in the first hundred of the rating, and in a couple three more reaches the finals of the ATP competitions and twice - in Amsterdam and Mexico City - conquers titles. At Roland Garros in 1998, Nicholas achieved the first significant success in the pair competitions of Grand Slam tournaments: together with Spaniard Julian Alonso, he makes his way to the quarterfinals of the local tournament, knocking out the fifth pair of sowing from the fight: Rick Leach / Ellis Ferreira alliance.

In 1999, the results of the Ecuadorian again improved dramatically: at the Australian Open , thanks to the ideal physical training, he immediately reached the semifinals, spending 24 games at once on five winning matches. In the future, the quality of the results remained at a very high level: in the spring Nicholas achieved the semi-finals and the quarterfinals at a bunch of tournaments of the Masters series in Hamburg and Rome ; in August and October, won the first single title in four years at ATP competitions, becoming the strongest in Indianapolis and Lyon . In November, Lapentti reached the semi-finals of the Paris Masters , thanks to which he was able to win the right to play at the Final ATP competition , where, however, he didn’t show himself. All these successes allowed him to climb to the highest line for himself in the single ranking position - November 22, for one week, he became the sixth racket of the world. At the end of the year, the Ecuadorian received the prestigious Progress of the Year prize from the authorizing organization .

The new level of results could not be held further: Nicholas occasionally beat the leaders of the single tour, but he did not fight for the position in Top10 more. However, sometimes Ecuadorian tennis player gave a very high-quality segments of performances. So for the year 2000, Lapentti’s only noticeable success in mixed-pair competitions fell on him: together with Austrian Barbara Schett, he reached the Wimbledon semifinal, losing only to future champions: Americans Donald Johnson and Kimberly Po . A year later, the Ecuadorian held his only protracted finals at the ATP tournaments : in the Austrian Kitzbühel, the struggle of Nicholas and Spaniard Albert Costa drew on four sets, where the Ecuadorian was stronger. Gradually, the qualitative component of the results of Lapentti declined: at Wimbledon -2002, he for the last time in his career overcame the third round in Grand Slam tournaments, and a few months before that - in Miami - for the last time for the next six years, he played in the quarters finals of the Masters series prize. In the same season, Nicholas won the ATP Tour solo competition for the fifth and final time.

In 2004, the final stage of Lapentti's career begins: gradually falling results drop to such a level that he hardly keeps in the first hundred of the rating, more and more saturating his calendar with “challengers”. This measure gives insignificant rating fixing and extends the career of Ecuadorian for several years; performances at any major tournaments are becoming more selective: Nicholas often misses the Australian and British Grand Slam tournaments. In September 2006, Lapentti reached the title match for the ATP main tour for the last time: in Palermo, he replayed two seminal opponents to concede to the third in the final. By 2010, the accumulated fatigue from constant failures in major tournaments and an increasingly frequent chronic knee injury makes itself felt, and after losing four games in a row in the spring, Lapentti completes his professional playing career after Roland Garros . ^[2]

After completing a career in one role, Nicholas remained in tennis in another: a few years after completing his playing career, Lapentti was able to head the entire Ecuadosian tennis federation, taking over as its president. ^[3]

National and national tournaments

For many years, Nicholas was a mandatory match participant of the Ecuadorian team in the Davis Cup . Having taken part in this tournament for the first time at the age of 16 (together with his uncle playing in the double play of the home match of this tournament against Venezuelans ^[4] ), Lapentti over the next seventeen years only once declined to participate in the national team games throughout the season. During this time, he rewrote team records for the number of match matches played and the number of victories, both in single matches and in all games under the flag of the national team. In addition, Nicholas entered the history of the tournament at the expense of his excellent physical form: having played 18 five-set single-player meetings as part of such competitions, he became the first athlete in the history of the tournament to win 13 victories in them. ^[5] In 2000, for the first time in 15 years, the Lapentti brothers brought the Ecuadorian team into the world tournament group, although they could not fix it there.

Three times Lapentti used his right to represent Ecuador at the Olympics tennis tournament , but in four matches he won only one meeting - in the doubles competition in 1996 .

According to the official ATP website for the last week of the year ^[6] .

• Profile on ATP website (eng.)

• Profile on the ITF website
• Profile on the Davis Cup website (eng.)