Athlete of the year in 2016: Tennis player Horia Tecau

In 2016, Romania won its Olympic medal in tennis.

Florin Orban, 29.12.2016, 12:49

In 2016, Romania won its Olympic medal in tennis. It was a good year for professional tennis in Romania, but not a very good one for Romania’s Davis Cup and Fed Cup teams. In the women’s singles, Romania still has one player in the world top ten, namely Simona Halep, while three other players are in the top 100, namely Irina Begu, Monica Niculescu and Sorana Cârstea. In the men’s doubles, Horia Tecǎu and Florin Mergea remain in the upper part of the ranking despite losing a few places compared with previous years.

To select our Athlete of the Year on RRI, we looked at tens of athletes from all sports disciplines. Our most important criterion in establishing the winner of this title is the performance at the Olympic Games. At this point, our short-list included the women’s epee team who won the gold in Rio in the nations’ competition, and Horia Tecau and Florin Mergea, who walked away with silver in the men’s doubles in Rio.

We then applied a new criterion, namely the athletes’ performances throughout the year and came up with our winner: Horia Tecau. And now let’s look at his performance this year. Tecau began 2016 by narrowly missing a new Grand Slam title. He reached the mixed doubles finals at the Australian Open, where he paired up with the American tennis player Coco Vandeweghe. However, the two were defeated by the Brazilian-Russian pair of Bruno Soares and Elena Vesnina in three sets, 6-4, 4-6, 10-5.

In April, Horia Tecau won his first tournament of the year. Together with Florin Mergea, he won the final of a tournament held in Bucharest against the Australian-Brazilian pair made up of Chris Guccione and Andre Sa. The score was 7-5, 6-4.

Tecau then went on to defeat Florin Mergea in the Madrid final. The pair made up of Horia Tecau and Jean Julien Rojer won their match against the Romanian-Indian pair Florin Mergea and Rohan Bopanna in two sets, 6-4, 7-6.

Tecau then lost in the semifinals in Stuttgart, Washington and Toronto. At the Rio Olympic Games in August, Horia Tecau again paired up with Florin Mergea. The two had a flawless run to the final, where they were overpowered by the Spanish pair Marc Lopez and Rafael Nadal, who won in three sets, 6-2, 3-6, 6-4. The Romanians came close to winning the Olympic title. In the decisive set, they broke at 3-all but the Spaniards came from behind and won three games in a row to win the match and Olympic gold. Before the year-end, Tecau lost another final in the Cincinnati tournament and went through to the semis in the Basel tournament.

And now for some background information about Horia Tecau. He was born in Brasov on January 19, 1985. He has been playing tennis since he was 7. In 2002 he won the junior doubles title in Wimbledon together with Florin Mergea. Tecau became a professional tennis player in 2003. In 2008, Tecau made to the top 100 in the doubles ranking before reaching the top 50 one year later, in November. He continued to climb in the rankings, reaching as far as world number 2 in November 2015, after winning the ATP World Tour Finals in London in November that year.