Marton Fucsovics and Timea Babos take Hungarian Player of the year honors
The Hungarian Tennis Federation has revealed the winners of the Player of the year awards, with Marton Fucsovics taking his sixth honor and Timea Babos who claimed it for the seventh time! The officials had an easy job while picking the best players of 2018, with Marton finishing inside the top-40 and Timea who is no. 3 on the WTA doubles list. The 26-year-old from Budapest scored 25 ATP wins this year, entering the season with just 22 overall, and winning his first ATP title in Geneva as the first Hungarian with an ATP crown since 1982!
Marton struggled with a hip injury but he still produced a very solid season that propelled him into the top-40, reaching the fourth round at the Australian Open where he had a chance to compete against Roger Federer. After five straight losses on the Tour in March and April, Fucsovics played in the quarter-final of Munich before that great Geneva run that earned the first ATP title for him, dethroning Stan Wawrinka and scoring an easy win over Peter Gojowczyk to write Hungarian tennis history. The results were not that good in the next couple of tournaments, hitting early exits and squandering match points against Stan Wawrinka in Toronto, losing to the Swiss in Cincinnati as well.
By the end of the season, Marton was the quarter-finalist in Beijing and Vienna and it was enough to wrap up the season ranked 46th, looking for more of the same in the season in front of us. The Hungarian Tennis Federation had established this award back in 1964 and Marton will have to work hard in order to catch Balazs Taroczy who was the Hungarian player of the year between 1973-86. The 25-year-old Timea Babos had an impressive season behind her, winning three titles with Kristina Mladenovic to spend almost the entire year in the top-five and finish it in the top-three for the first time in a career.
In addition, she won one singles WTA title to close the year in the top-60, leaving all the rivals behind her to secure the seventh player of the year award, standing behind Andrea Temisvari who grabbed 12 honors. Timea and Kristina won the Australian Open and they were also the semi-finalists at Indian Wells and the finalists in Madrid. They were beaten in the quarters in Rome, Roland Garros, Eastbourne, Wimbledon, Montreal and Cincinnati, winning the title in Birmingham in between to add more points to their tally (Timea became world no. 1 in July) before another stellar result in New York where they reached the final of the US Open. Babos and Mladenovic clinched the season in style, conquering the WTA Finals after beating the top seeds Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova 6-4, 7-5.
from Tennis World USA http://bit.ly/2QJiwQx
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