WITH all the ATP Tour and WTA Tour tournaments on hiatus for the time being, Draft Central will take a look at various nations across the globe and analyse how the top players from that nation are performing. Our next nation is Georgia.

Top ATP player: Nikoloz Basilashvili
Rank: 27th (as of March 9, 2020)
Age: 28
Points: 1395
Tournaments Played: 24

By far the best player of the three highlighted in the nation analysis pieces thus far, Nikoloz Basilashvili is a top 30 player and seeded at Grand Slam events. At 28-years-old, he might not be in the top echelon of elite talents, but he has reached a career-high 19th last May. Basilashvili still rolls with a two-handed backhand and has been pro for 12 years since he was a teenager, having amassed $5,479,761 USD prize money over his career.

Basilashvili has a 98-103 overall win-loss record on the ATP Tour which is not great, but his last couple of years have shown some promising signs winning all his three titles in those seasons – becoming the first ever Georgian to win an ATP Tour title. He is the back-to-back winner on the clay at Hamburg, and also triumphed in Beijing on the hard courts which helped lift his ranking from just inside the top 100 into the top 20. Having now maintained a place in the top 30 since October 2018, Basilashvili has been a ray of consistency the past 18 months. In those Hamburg titles, the Georgian downed the likes of Alexander Zverev and Andrey Rublev on his way to the 2019 triumph, while rewinding 12 months earlier he also knocked off Pablo Carreno Busta and two-time winner and then reigning champion, Leonardo Mayer in the final.

In 2020, Basilashvili has had some up and down moments, knocking off Pablo Cuevas in the ATP Cup, as well as wins against Soonwoo Kwon and Ricardas Berankis in Melbourne and Dubai respectively. He was smashed in some matches though, losing 6-1 6-0 to Jan-Lennard Struff in the Round of 16 at Dubai, and 6-2 6-3 to Rublev in the first round at Rotterdam.

Other notable Georgia ATP players: Aleksandre Metreveli (#568), Aleksandre Bakshi (#865), George Tsivadze (#874)

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Top WTA player: Mariam Bolkvadze
Rank: 181st (as of March 9, 2020)
Age: 22
Points: 337
Tournaments Played: 20

The top ranked Georgian is just inside the top 200 in the WTA Tour, with Mariam Bolkvadze still having plenty of time to improve that ranking at just 22 years of age. She has already played 317 matches – albeit all bar two which have come on the ITF Tour – winning 204 of those and reaching 152nd in the world. Unfortunately her 2020 has not gone to plan, losing in the first round of qualifying at the Australian Open to United States’ Caroline Dolehide after bowing out to 205th ranked Swiss player, Conny Perrin.

Bolkvadze’s best Grand Slam result was a Round of 64 finish at the US Open last year, which has been her only win on the WTA Tour main draw. In that event, Bolkvadze made it through qualifying and knocked off Bernarda Pera on her home soil, before running into red-hot Karoline Pliskova in the Round of 64. Twelve months ago, Bolkvadze reached three out of four ITF finals in a busy month, winning one of them.

Other notable Georgia WTA players: Ekaterine Gorgodze (#205), Sofia Shapatava (#371), Mariam Dalakishvili (#807)

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Summary:

Georgia does not have an array of top ranked players, but Basilashvili is the star of the nation and one who holds the weight of success on his shoulders, particularly when it comes to Davis Cup. They have enough players to form a team for the team events, but overall are still growing in terms of their tennis development.