Vietnamese tennis ace loses to player outside top 1000

Nam is 469 places higher than Yamasaki on the ATP world ranking. The two players, who are both 26, met once at the Vietnam F6 Futures where Nam won 2-0.

In the rematch on Tuesday, Nam showed his class to win two breaks and lead 5-2. At this moment, a heavy rain appeared at Gold Coast tennis court and the match was postponed to Wednesday.

When the match returned, several errors by the Japanese player helped Nam win the first set 6-2. However, the postponement of the match affected Nam's momentum in the remaining time.

Yamasaki’s serves were not good in this match, but Nam performed even worse, making six double faults in the whole match. In the second set, Nam’s efforts could not make up for his mistakes and he lost 4-6.

In the decisive third set, when the game was balanced, Nam made a double fault and lost confidence from there. He reclaimed the break in the next game but once again repeated the double fault twice and eventually lost 3-6.

This is the third time this year Nam has been eliminated in the first round of a M25 tournament. Before that, he lost to George Loffhagen, a British player who was 457 places behind him, at the M25 Mysuru in India. In mid-June, Nam lost to Israel’s Orel Kimhi, who was 314 places behind him M25 Nakhon si Thammarat in Thailand.

After a year of regular competition in ATP and Challenger tournaments, Nam’s best performance was only reaching the quarterfinals at the M25 Hua Hin in Thailand and the M25 Brisbane in Australia. In 2023, Nam has dropped from 244th to 563rd.