Dmitry Tursunov faces Teymuraz Gabashvili in the opening round of the St Petersburg Open today.
Tursunov began the year ranked well outside the top 100 and faced with the prospect of slogging it out on the challenger circuit to get back up the rankings, not a great proposition for a player who's been in the world's top 20.
However he got stuck in and after a series of impressive performances, including winning a grass-court ATP title in Holland in June, he's back in the world's top 40 and moving towards his career best ranking of 20.
Tursunov has enjoyed a solid autumn so far, reaching a couple of quarter-finals, going out to eventual champion Janko Tipsarevic in Moscow last week. Unfortunately for the eighth seed, he's on a collision course with Tipsarevic again and no one wants to face the red hot Serb right now.
However he will be confident of getting past qualifier Gabashvili today. Tursunov has won all three of their past matches although all have been fairly close three setters. The last one was a 5-7, 7-5, 6-4 win in Washington last year.
Prediction: Tursunov in three.
