No Place Like Home: Melzer made his mark in Vienna

Each week, Baseline will take a look at a player who has thrived at one of the stops on the ATP and WTA tours during their career. (Photos: Getty Images)

Despite reaching the finals of the ATP 500-level tournament in Vienna, Austria, three times, Thomas Muster—the nation’s only former world No. 1 in singles—was never able to win the event. Last year, Dominic Thiem delighted the home crowd when he won the championship in a hard-fought three sets over Diego Schwartzman.

In between the runs of those two players, a compatriot of theirs managed to break through, even becoming one of several men to win the title in back-to-back years.

Jurgen Melzer, who recently announced his impending retirement, has had a roller-coaster ride through his time at the decades-old event. When he made his debut there in 1999 as a wild-card recipient, the 18-year-old reigning Wimbledon boys’ champion upset the veteran German Lars Burgsmuller in the first round, but then fell to former world No. 4 Nicolas Kiefer in the round of 16. The budding pro missed the 2000 edition, but returned in 2001, going 1-1 in matches. Entering the 2002 tournament ranked inside the Top 100, Melzer advanced to his first quarterfinal in Vienna, where he was stopped by Jiri Novak of the Czech Republic.

Continued ups and downs subsequently occurred over the next several years as he only advanced as far as the quarterfinals in two of his next six appearances.

Any number of pros will feel the pressure playing in front of their home crowd, and Melzer was proving to be no exception. That all changed, though, in 2009. Seeded seventh, the Vienna native finally managed to capture the title, defeating Marin Cilic in the final. With the victory, Melzer became the second Austrian, after Horst Skoff in 1988, to win the tournament.

Already proving to be quite prolific in doubles, Melzer almost completed the dream sweep that year. However, he and Julian Knowle were stopped in the final by a countryman of theirs, Oliver Marach, and Lukasz Kubot.

Returning as the defending champion in 2010, Melzer was in the midst of the best season of his career. A semifinal showing at the French Open, along with two second-week appearances at Wimbledon and the US Open, helped the Austrian secure a spot among the world’s Top 15 and in Vienna, that was enough to land him atop the draw. He lived up to the expectations that came with such a lofty position and defended his title, beating lucky loser and countryman Andreas Heider-Maurer in three sets in the final.

The next year, he reached the quarterfinals, then went 3-4 over his next four appearances before calling it quits on his singles career to focus only on doubles. There was good cause to go that route with injuries having taken their toll. Plus, he was one of only a handful of players to crack the Top 10 in both disciplines in the 2000s.

Aside from his 2009 final, there were other noteworthy moments, such as a runner-up appearance with Knowle three years earlier and a win over all-time greats Jonas Bjorkman and Todd Woodbridge in 2003, when he teamed up with Stefan Koubek. More than a decade after his first appearance in the doubles draw, Melzer finally won the title in 2014. Partnering Philipp Petzschner of Germany, with whom he had won Wimbledon and the US Open near the start of the decade, the duo beat Knowle and Andre Begemann, another Austrian-German combo, in the final.

Overall, Melzer played five finals between singles and doubles, winning three titles over nearly two decades at the tournament, as he showed what a player can do with an adoring crowd behind him.