Kwesi Mugisa, Staff Reporter
GERMANY-BASED Dustin Brown has taken over from Ryan Russell as Jamaica's No. 1 ranked tennis player following a recent 107-point climb in the ATP rankings.
On the heels of a string of solid performances, Brown has advanced to 635th place, 123 places ahead of Russell who is placed at 758th.
During a three-month stretch Brown made four quarter-final Futures tournament appearances. He also made a semi-final appearance at this year's Futures tournament in Cesena, Italy, where he eventually lost out to Italy's Alessandro Accardo.
SOLIS RESULTS
However, a lot of Brown's points came from four weeks of play in the German satellite series held last month. He lost out to eventual tournament winner Ernests Gulbis of Latvia in week one and quarter-finalist David Klier in week two, but then strung together a series of solid results in the last two weeks.
His biggest result was winning week three's tournament with a 4-6, 7-6, 6-0 victory over Italy's Enrico Iannuzzi in the final after victories over 530th ranked Marcel Zimmerman of Germany and 352nd ranked Sabastian Rieschick along the way. In the final week of play, the Jamaican was again stopped by Gulbis but this time it was in the semi-finals of the event.
Brown also won a doubles tournament when he teamed up with Lado Chikhladze of Georgia to beat the No. 1 seeded pair of Bastian Knittel and Ralph Grambow of Germany in the final.
Twenty-one-year old Brown's next assignment will be a Futures tournament in Belgium next week.
