De la Puente: 'Winning a title here at home would be amazing'
Martin de la Puente is expecting two ‘very good semi-finals’ on day five at the NEC Wheelchair Singles Masters and ITF Wheelchair Doubles Masters in Barcelona, as the 24-year-old Spaniard targets victory in both the men’s singles and doubles.
His prediction is hardly unexpected. After all, the world’s top-four ranked players remain in contention for the men’s singles title and three of the four will also feature in the men’s doubles semi-finals, with only world No.1 singles player Tokito Oda not among the doubles semi-finalists.
“I'm ready to play the semi-finals against Alfie (Hewett). I’m really looking forward to seeing how I can put him under pressure,” said world No.4 De la Puente. “I'll be ready to fight with him, but I also think that the level of wheelchair tennis has now increased recently. There are many young players that are pushing at the top. Tokito is one of the best examples.
“And Ruben (Spaargaren). He was meant to be here this week but he isn't because of injury. I think that there's a big pool of next gen players that are pushing a lot. We all want to be on the top of the rankings. I think there are going to be some very good semi-finals. Tokito and Gustavo (Fernandez) is going to be a very good one, so let's hope to have some great tennis.”
While maybe not making any ground-breaking predictions, De la Puente is well placed to voice his opinion. He is one of only two players to have beaten both Oda and world No. 2 Hewett this season and the only player to have beaten Oda and Hewett on clay, the surface on which the year-end singles and doubles championships are being played for the first time.
It’s also the first time that that the Singles and Doubles Masters have been played in Spain. De le Puente needs no better motivation.
“It’s always special to be playing at home but it also adds pressure, playing in front of your friends, your people,” he said. “It's tough, it's not easy to deal with, but on the other hand it's always good to look on the tribune (the stands) and see all the noisy Spanish supporters cheering for me, so it is very special and I'm very happy that we're playing here.
“It would be amazing, to be honest (to win a title) and I'd love to win the doubles again with Gustavo. It would be amazing and I think that if we if we play good we're going to have our chances.”
For De la Puente and Argentina's Fernandez, who will play French duo Frederic Cattaneo and Stephane Houdet in the men’s doubles semis (and aim to avenge their semi-final loss at last week’s Catalonia Open), playing the Masters in Barcelona amounts to playing in their own backyard. For De le Puente it’s part of a concerted plan hatched six years ago to reach the top of the sport.
“It's all about the process. I came here in 2017 to Barcelona. I moved to the high performance centre to train with Fernando (San Martin) and Gustavo and since then we were spending many hours on court, making many sacrifices,” said De la Puente. “I left my family and I miss my hometown, Vigo, a lot, but I also go back to visit a lot. In 2017 we made this plan for the future and the results, the progress since are due to all the passion and hours that we have put in on court.
“I feel like clay is very familiar with the Spanish type of play. We like to make a lot of balls, make a lot of long rallies and push the opponent back. I’ve had two very good tournaments this year on clay, including one here in Barcelona and the other one was in Nice (at the French Riviera Open). I've done things I’ve never done before. In Barcelona I beat Alfie and then Gustavo in the final. So let's say clay is our arena, our boxing ring and we feel comfortable with it.
“I played very good (in the semi-finals) in Nice against Tokito. I would have loved to have beaten him in the semi at the Grand Slam in Paris, but I got my revenge in Nice.”
Two years before De la Puente made the move to base himself in Barcelona, he won the first of three successive Cruyff Foundation Junior Masters titles. The same year – 2015 - Jiske Griffioen won the second of her three NEC Wheelchair Singles Masters women’s titles.
Griffioen is back in the semi-finals this year after coming through a rain delay and time-out for repairs to her tennis chair before finally taking her fourth match point to defeat Kgothatso Montjane 6-2, 6-7(3), 7-6(5) in their last round-robin group match.
It was a win that left Griffioen second in her group to world No. 1 and five-time defending champion Diede de Groot. De Groot will play first-time Masters semi-finalist Zhenzhen Zhu for a place in this year’s final.
World No. 1 Niels Vink and world No. 2 Sam Schroder, quad singles champions in each of the last two years, will contest the quad singles semi-finals against four-time former finalist Andy Lapthorne and Singles Masters debutant Guy Sasson, respectively.