As a middle-class tournament in the professional tennis system, the ATP Challenger is below the Tour and above the Hope. Every year, many countries host a significant number of Challengers, far fewer than the Hope Tournament, but far more than the Tour.

In terms of prize money and points, the challenge is also in the middle of the two. For example, the Chengdu Challenge, in which Pansiqi signed up, is the highest level of challenge, with a total prize fund of $125,000 and 125 world points for the winner. It can be said that the champion of this challenge can top several hope tournament champions.

In addition, the composition of the Challenge is significantly different from that of the Tour and Hope Tournaments. The tournament is a stage where the world's best players gather, and everyone who can establish themselves on the tour is the top tennis player in each country. It can be said that players who are perennially ranked in the top 100 in the world can be included in this range.

The Hope Tournament is the world of young people and weaker players, and the number of them is also the largest, forming the bottom of the entire tennis pyramid.

The players participating in the Challenge are generally composed of four types of players: tour players who need to feel like winning, players who have been hovering around one or two hundred for a long time to seek a breakthrough, high-level players who have returned from a long injury, and rising stars who have just made a breakthrough in the rankings. None of these four types of players are easy to deal with.

Tour players who need to feel like they are those who are consistently ranked in the top 100 in the world, but are prone to ups and downs in their performances on tour. These players are often present in every tournament, but they often lose to seeded players in the first two rounds and go home early. Losing too many games will lead to a lack of games, and secondly, they will be prone to mental imbalances.

In order to maintain enough matches to adjust, they will go to the Challenge to regain their confidence when they are not doing well. For example, Lu Yanxun, who signed up for the Chengdu Challenger this time, decided to come to the Challenger to adjust because he almost didn't win much during Wimbledon at the French Open.

This type of player has only one goal in the Challenger, which is to win the championship. However, this does not mean that a player of Lu Yanxun's caliber will definitely win the championship if he signs up for the competition. That's because there are usually 3 or 4 of these players competing at the same time for almost the same reason in each challenge. Almost all of these players will occupy the top four seeds in the Challenger, so for the rest of the players, only beating one of them will have any hope of securing a place in the Final Four.

If you want to win the title, then in the most extreme case, you may need to beat three of these masters in a row to achieve it. For players participating in the Challenger, this is almost as difficult as winning consecutive tournaments on the tour.

Players who have been hovering around one or two hundred for a long time in search of a breakthrough belong to the most common category in the challenge. These players are generally very determined to move up the rankings, and they come to the Challenger to fight hard, and they have to fight for their lives with their fellow players before they can face the tour players mentioned above. Zhang Ze, Wu Di and others belong to this category of players.

This kind of player in a country where tennis is not strong almost represents the highest level of tennis in their country. However, when they are in their home country, they often encounter unprecedented setbacks when they arrive at the challenge competition. Because after a long time, they will sadly find that there are too many geniuses in this world, and maybe their careers will stop there.

Take Wu Di as an example, it has been a long time since he turned into professional tennis, but after so many years of hard training, he still can't stand out in the challenger, and the tour seems to be becoming a dream that is getting farther and farther away. At this point, it seems impossible to explain the problem if you don't work hard enough. It can only be said that in the field of tennis, Wu Di's physical talent leads to the greatest achievement he can achieve.

High-level players who have returned from a long-term injury, this kind of player also has a strong impact, one is that they have the strength of the top 100, but they have to participate in the challenge tournament after resting for more than half a year due to injuries or family reasons. This kind of player, although injured, is still very strong. The Challenge is just a springboard for them to return to the Tour.

There are also veterans who have never been able to return to the top after injury, and their old bodies have caused them to no longer be able to adapt to the intensity of the tour. This type of player will spend the last days of his career in the Challenge. However, this process can seem very long. After all, the level of competition in the challenge is much lower than that of the tour. However, the existence of such players often becomes a nightmare for other players, after all, it is the emaciated camel that is bigger than the horse.

Finally, there are rising stars who have just made a breakthrough in the rankings. Many of the rising stars who have excelled in junior competitions fall into this category. Although these players are inexperienced, they are also very competitive in the challenge tournament with their strong talent.

However, rising stars do not necessarily mean that they are all young players, and there are many older players who can also be classified in this category. Such a player may not be able to achieve good results at the beginning of his career, and when he reaches a certain age, his or her technical level suddenly improves dramatically, and thus achieves a leap in performance. It can be said that the self-confidence of this type of player is the strongest of all the above players.

As for Pansiqi, it stands to reason that he should belong to the last category of players. But the difference is that Pansiqi did not experience the low ebb at the beginning of his career, but made a huge leap in his performance as soon as he debuted. In this sense, Pansic is closer to the talented teenagers who were once born in tennis. But at the age of thirty, it is really inappropriate to be a teenager again, let's call it a genius middle-aged.

After listening to Coach Zheng's detailed introduction to the ATP Challenger, Pan Xiqi has a deeper understanding of the Chengdu tournament he is about to participate in. In his opinion, although the overall level of the challenge is not as good as that of the tour, it is not so easy to get good results. As for the championship, at least for a player of Wu Di's level, it is also quite difficult. This is also why the entire Chinese men's tennis world has only won two challenge championships so far.

In addition, those famous players on the tour are also the biggest obstacles on his way to winning the championship. Judging from the list of participants, in addition to Lu Yanxun, well-known tour players in this Chengdu Challenge include Japan's Tian Tianhao and Israel's Serra. It can be said that if he wants to win the championship, these players are the obstacles he will have to overcome no matter what.