Gianluca Cadenasso has won the San Gregorio di Catania Challenger. In the final he beat Romania's Radu Mihai Papoe 6-4 3-6 6-4, in a match that went the full three sets and demanded all the patience the Ligurian had on Sicilian clay.
It is a title that matters. The Challenger 50 gives 50 points to the winner and 30 to the finalist, and for Cadenasso it means ending a season that has been uphill all the way with a trophy in hand. According to SuperTennis, it is his second Challenger title.
Cadenasso, born on 29 September 2004, is 22 and sits at No. 192 in the world with 310 points in the site's live ranking. Ahead of him is Liam Draxl, No. 191, with 311 points; behind him is Alexis Galarneau, No. 193, with 309. In that part of the ranking a single point separates three players, so every match counts double.
The tournament began on 12 October. The draw had 27 players from ten nations, and the best-represented flag was the Italian one, with ten players. There were 26 matches played, with eight tie-breaks, eleven matches that went to a deciding set, a single set that finished 6-0 and one retirement.
On the site's draw, Cadenasso appears for the first time in the quarterfinals, where he met Germany's Marvin Moeller. It was the longest match of the whole week: 7-5 4-6 7-6(5), 35 games in total. The tie-break in the third set went to the Ligurian, 7 points to 5.
In the semifinal came the meeting with Massimo Giunta, and this time there was no contest: 6-2 6-3. Giunta had got there by beating Henry Searle 6-7(7) 6-2 6-2, then Pavel Lagutin 7-5 6-3 and Max Wiskandt 6-1 6-2, so he was certainly no pushover.
For Cadenasso it was also a small act of revenge. A few days earlier, at the Palermo Challenger, he had lost to Giunta in the round of 16, 7-6(9) 7-5. The head-to-head between the two now stands at 1-1 over two matches, with the last word going to the Ligurian.
On the other side of the draw, Papoe had been flawless. The Romanian, born on 28 August 2002 and therefore 24, had beaten Michele Ribecai 6-3 6-4, Luca Potenza 6-3 6-4, Zdenek Kolar 6-4 6-2 and, in the semifinal, Felix Gill 6-4 7-5. Until the final he had not dropped a single set.
The final was one in which nobody ran away with it. Cadenasso took the first set 6-4, Papoe answered with a 6-3 in the second to level things up, and then in the third the Italian closed again 6-4. The Romanian still takes home 30 points and rises to No. 287 with 200 points.
The value of this week is clearer when you look at the rest of the season. In 2026 Cadenasso had collected 10 points for the quarterfinals in Bari, 5 for the round of 16 in Palermo and one point each at the Genoa 2 and Biella Challengers. Added together that makes 17: the Catania title alone is worth almost three times as much.
In the last nine matches followed by the site, Cadenasso has won three and lost six. All three wins came this week: before Catania, in the matches the site tracks, he was on a run of six straight defeats, between Biella 2025 and Palermo. The Sicilian tournament ended the streak in the best possible way.
There is also a more delicate chapter. According to SuperTennis, Cadenasso suffered a wrist ligament tear last summer, shortly after reaching his career-high ranking. The Catania title therefore also has the flavour of a comeback.
Sunday 18 October was a special day for Italian tennis. Again according to SuperTennis, for the first time since 1978, the year the Challenger circuit was born, three Italians won a singles title in the same week.
Besides Cadenasso, Mattia Bellucci won in Jinan, China, beating Martin Landaluce in the final 6-2 4-6 6-3 and returning to the top 70. In Maia, Portugal, Francesco Passaro got past Hungary's Zsombor Piros 4-6 6-3 6-2: it is his fifth Challenger and his second in a row after the one in Palermo.
The points scale of a Challenger 50 helps to read the result: 50 for the title, 30 for the final, 18 for the semifinal, 10 for the quarterfinals, 5 for the round of 16 and one point for the third round. Giunta, a semifinalist, takes home 18; Moeller, knocked out in the quarterfinals, 10.
The draw had a strong blue tint. Among the Italians were also Marco Cecchinato, stopped in the third round by Pedro Vives Marcos 6-4 6-4, and Carlo Alberto Caniato, who lost 6-4 3-6 6-2 to Moeller in the round of 16. Ten Italians out of 27 players: and the winner was one of them.
And now? Over the next six weeks Cadenasso has only 5 points to defend, those from the third round at the Maia Challenger 100 in 2025. That means the ranking, at least in numbers, can only move in the right direction. For a 22-year-old who has found winning again at just the right moment, it is exactly the news he needed.
Test yourself
3 questions on what you have just read.
1. What was the score of Cadenasso's final win over Papoe?
2. Who did Cadenasso beat in the semifinal?
3. How many Italians won a singles Challenger in the same week, for the first time since 1978?