Player Profile: Meet Ernests Gulbis

Ernests Gulbis (born August 30, 1988) is a tennis player from Latvia. He is currently ranked 80th in the world for singles, and 241st for doubles. Gulbis is coached by Karl Heinz Wetter. He used to be coached by Nikola Pilić, the former Yugoslavian tennis player and Croatian and German Davis Cup captain, and trained at the Niki Pilic Tennis Academy in Germany since he was 12.

Tennis career

The highlights of his career up to 2006 are: reaching the final of the Oberstaufen Challenger in July 2006, where he lost to Michal Tabara; reaching the final of the Tampere Challenger, also in July 2006, where he lost to Florian Mayer; reaching the semi-finals of ATP St. Petersburg Open as a wildcard in October, where he lost to Mario Ančić; and winning the Eckental Challenger in November, where he defeated Philipp Petzschner.


2007

Gulbis started his season as a qualifier in the Sydney Medibank International, losing in the first round to Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus.[4] He was subsequently defeated in the first qualifying round of the Australian Open.

Gulbis has been relatively successful on the Challenger circuit in 2007. He reached the quarterfinals in Bergamo (l. to Fabrice Santoro) and the semifinals in Heilbronn (l. to Michael Llodra). Gulbis won his second Challenger title by triumphing over the local favourite, Edouard Roger-Vasselin, at the Besançon Challenger in France, enabling him to break into the ATP Top 100 for the first time in his career. In his next tournament, the Sarajevo Challenger, Gulbis emerged victorious in both the singles and doubles events.

In the first week of October, he won the Mons Challenger in Belgium (d. Kristof Vliegen) as the top seed, breaking into the AP Top 50 for the first time in his career and surpassing Juan Martin Del Potro as the highest-ranked player born in 1988....more Ernests Gulbis profile on Wikipedia

He is current No.80 on South African Airways ATP Ranking List.

Ernests Gulbis's Gear:
Racquet: HEAD

Ernests Gulbis profile on the ATP Tour's official website.


(via Wikipedia, photo/AP Photo/David Vincent via Yahoo Spots)