ATP: Fernando Verdasco and Mikhail Youzhny face 500 victories on the ATP tour

Only a few players on the ATP Tour are still active at the age of 35. With Fernando Verdasco and Mikhail Youzhny, two players face a milestone.

500 victories on the ATP Tour. Only a few players have managed this trick so far. Roger Federer (1149), Rafael Nadal (889) or Novak Djokovic with 788 victories are among the absolute top class and are the exception.

Richard Gasquet, the first French player to cross the border in Monte Carlo, recently joined the elite 500s club. Curiously enough, he also celebrated his first victory on the tour in the Principality. Stories that only sport writes.

In front of the 500 W’s are now two more legionnaires of the sport. With the Spaniard Fernando Verdasco and the Russian Mikhail Youzhny, two “old hands” are also likely to be in this category.

Verdasco only needs one win left to win at the Madrid Masters. The 34-year-old has been celebrating his second spring since last year and is playing more aggressively and with more power than ever. Currently, the left-handed man ranks 37th in the world.

Also very close to the 500 is the long runner and powder keg Youzhny. Boris Sobkin’s protégé has won 497 games to date. The former number eight in the world wants to collect the remaining triumphs in the coming weeks. In Istanbul this did not work out at first. The extrovert man from Moscow failed clearly in the first round against Thomas Fabbiano from Italy (1:6, 1:6).

Youzhny is best known for his temperament on the tennis court and has already delivered one or two memorable moments of self-denial. A few years ago, after a mistake, he completely lost control and hammered his racket against his head. The 35-year-old had to be treated for a long time with a resulting laceration.