Simon Greul

Simon Greul
Simon Greul at the 2009 US Open
Nation:	Germany
Birthday:	April 13, 1981
Size:	185 cm
Weight:	80 kg
1st professional season:	2000
Resignation:	2013
Playing hand:	Right
Prize money:	$ 1,320,950
singles
Career record:	44:72
Highest ranking:	55 (March 22, 2010)
Grand Slam record
Double
Career record:	9:23
Highest ranking:	121 (April 12, 2010)
Grand Slam record
Sources: official player profiles at the ATP / WTA and ITF (see web links )

Simon Greul (born April 13, 1981 in Stuttgart ) is a former German tennis player .

life and career

Simon Greul started playing tennis at the age of six. Three years later he moved to the First Line Tennis Academy, where he has been coached by Robert Lopez ever since. After gaining his first experience at future tournaments in 1999, he decided to pursue a professional career in 2000 after successfully completing high school in Ludwigsburg and completing military service.

In August 2000 he was able to win a future tournament in Berlin for the first time and finished the year in 521th place in the tennis world rankings . In 2001 he played more on the ATP Challenger Tour and was able to celebrate his first title there in September 2001 in Aschaffenburg .

In 2002 he won another future tournament, and in early 2003 the second Challenger title in Dallas . In addition, he tried at the Australian Open for the first time to qualify for a Grand Slam tournament , but he lost in the third qualifying round. In July 2003, Simon Greul got a wild card for the ATP tournament in his hometown Stuttgart , but he lost his first round match against the Czech Jiří Vaněk . After he had climbed to number 148 in the world rankings in the middle of the year, he had to pause for almost half a year from August 2003 due to problems with the appendix and fell back to 606th place in the world rankings.

After slowly working his way up again in 2004, the year 2005 was all the better for Simon Greul: He won a total of three future tournaments and also reached the finals of two Challenger tournaments, one of which he won in Oberstaufen . Two years after his ATP debut, he was able to qualify for the main field again in Stuttgart, but lost in the first round, just as in Ho Chi Minh City .

The year 2006 was even more successful for Simon Greul: He qualified directly at the Delray Beach ATP tournament and scored his first victory at ATP level in the first round against Mardy Fish . Greul was able to qualify at the Masters tournament in Miami and, after victories over Paradorn Srichaphan , Dominik Hrbatý and Tim Henman, advanced to the round of 16, where he lost in three sets to Andy Roddick . After winning the Challenger tournaments in Dresden , Ettlingen and Córdoba , Greul rose to 76th place in the world rankings and was thus directly qualified in the 2006 Wimbledon Championships . In his Grand Slam debut, however, he was just as inferior to Tommy Robredo as Mardy Fish two months later at the US Open . But he was able to reach the round of 16 at his home tournament in Stuttgart and the second round at the ATP tournaments in Munich , Umag , Mumbai , Stockholm and Lyon . He defeated Gastón Gaudio , the winner of the French Open 2004, in Lyon .

In the first half of 2007 Greul was only able to win two matches in eight ATP tournaments and thus fell out of the top 100 again. In June 2007 Simon Greul won two Challenger tournaments in a row in Almaty . In Stuttgart he got a wild card like four years ago, but lost in the first round to Philipp Kohlschreiber . Chronic wrist pain caused him to undergo surgery in August 2007 and was unable to play tournaments until the end of the year.

Since he lost world ranking points again, Simon Greul played future tournaments again at the beginning of 2008, and was able to win two straight away. After some good results at Challenger tournaments, Greul was able to qualify for the French Open in May 2008 , but lost there against Ernests Gulbis . In September 2008 he won two Challenger tournaments in a row, first in Freudenstadt and a week later in Alphen aan den Rijn . After another finals in Tarragona , Greul ended his comeback year in 126th place in the world rankings.

At the beginning of 2009, Greul won his first victory at ATP level in almost two years against Daniel Gimeno Traver in Chennai . In May 2009 he qualified for the French Open as in the previous year , but again there was a first round defeat against Victor Crivoi . A month later, Simon Greul was able to record his first victory in a Grand Slam tournament at Wimbledon after successfully qualifying again against Michael Yani . However , he had no chance against the fourth-placed Novak oković . It was similar for him at the US Open 2009 , where, after a first round win over Giovanni Lapentti in the second round, he was defeated by the then world number one Roger Federer in three tight sets . Further highlights of this season were a Challenger victory in Todi , reaching the semi-finals at the ATP tournament in Bucharest and the quarter-finals at the ATP tournament in Hamburg . With 59th place he achieved his best year-end ranking in the world to date.

After another first round defeat at the Australian Open 2010 against his compatriot Tommy Haas , the first highlight of the year came at the beginning of March 2010, when Greul was appointed to the German Davis Cup team for the first time . Although he won his match against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga , he could no longer prevent the 1: 4 defeat against France. The following week Greul made it into the third round at the Indian Wells Masters tournament after victories over the French Richard Gasquet and Gaël Monfils , but then had to give up his game against Jürgen Melzer without a fight due to a viral illness . Nevertheless, in the following week he achieved his best position in the world rankings with rank 55. Until June 2010, Greul never got past the second round in any ATP tournament, only in 's-Hertogenbosch did he succeed again by defeating Tommy Robredo before losing to Benjamin Becker in the quarter-finals . At the home tournament in Stuttgart he also made it into the quarter-finals for the first time after defeating Gilles Simon , but lost to Juan Carlos Ferrero there . The following months were very unsuccessful for Simon Greul: At the American hard court tournaments he was eliminated in the first round, including at the US Open against Richard Gasquet. Since he could not defend his last year's challenger title and only reached the second round in Bucharest and thus lost the points from the previous year, Greul fell out of the top 100 in the world rankings.

In qualifying for the Australian Open 2011 , Simon Greul was eliminated in the third round against Denis Gremelmayr , but he still moved into the main field as a lucky loser . There he lost in three sets against Juan Mónaco, who was in 26th position . Two weeks later, Greul reached the quarter-finals at the ATP tournament in Johannesburg , where he was eliminated against Izak van der Merwe . In the course of the tournament he defeated the up-and-coming young Canadian Milos Raonic , who Greul named one of his three toughest opponents a year later.

Simon Greul played for TV Reutlingen until 2006 , with whom he rose from the Württembergliga to the 1st Bundesliga in two consecutive years . In 2007 he moved to TK Kurhaus Aachen , with which he became German champion in 2008 and 2009.

successes

Legend (number of victories)

Grand Slam

ATP World Tour Finals

ATP World Tour Masters 1000

ATP World Tour 500

ATP World Tour 250

ATP Challenger Tour (17)

singles

Victories

No.	date	competition	Topping	Final opponent	Bottom line
1.	September 9, 2001	Aschaffenburg	sand	Martin Verkerk	7: 6 5 , 6: 2
2.	February 1, 2003	Dallas	Hard court (i)	Justin Gimelstob	6: 3, 7: 6 5
3.	July 10, 2005	Oberstaufen	sand	Albert Portas	7: 5, 6: 2
4th	May 14, 2006	Dresden	sand	Janko Tipsarevic	7: 6 2 , 6: 2
5.	June 4, 2006	Ettlingen	sand	Michael Berrer	6: 4, 6: 3
6th	July 9, 2006	Cordoba	Hard court	Kevin Kim	6: 7 4 , 6: 1, 7: 6 2
7th	June 23, 2007	Almaty (1)	sand	Daniel Brands	6: 4, 6: 2
8th.	June 30, 2007	Almaty (2)	sand	Jun Woong-sun	6: 3, 6: 2
9.	August 31, 2008	Freudenstadt	sand	Matthias Bachinger	6: 3, 6: 4
10.	September 7, 2008	Alphen aan den Rijn	sand	Iván Navarro	6: 4, 6: 3
11.	September 20, 2009	Todi	sand	Adrian Ungur	2: 6, 6: 1, 7: 6 6
12.	June 11, 2011	Košice	sand	Victor Crivoi	6: 2, 6: 1
13.	September 28, 2012	Porto Alegre	sand	Gastão Elias	2: 6, 7: 6 5 , 7: 5

Double

Victories

No.	date	competition	Topping	partner	Final opponent	Bottom line
1.	June 8, 2003	Fuerth	sand	Denis Gremelmayr	Tomas Behrend Karsten Braasch	6: 3, 1: 6, 7: 6 5
2.	April 19, 2009	Rome	sand	Alessandro Motti	Daniele Bracciali Filippo Volandri	6: 4, 7: 5
3.	April 26, 2009	Rome	sand	Christopher Kas	Johan Brunström Jean-Julien Rojer	4: 6, 7: 6 2 , [10: 2]
4th	June 11, 2011	Košice	sand	Bastian Knittel	Facundo Bagnis Eduardo Schwank	2: 6, 6: 3, [11: 9]

Final participation

No.	date	competition	Topping	partner	Final opponent	Bottom line
1.	February 21, 2010	Buenos Aires	sand	Peter Luczak	Sebastián Prieto Horacio Zeballos	6: 7 4 , 3: 6

Web links

Commons : Simon Greul  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• ATP profile of Simon Greul (English)
• ITF profile of Simon Greul (English)
• Davis Cup Statistics for Simon Greul (English)
• official homepage

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Simon Greul - Age protects against folly
2. ↑ Milos Raonic makes Simon Greul stand out from the crowd ( memento of the original from October 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Federal League Archives 2004–2009