Bernard Tomic won the Lincoln Challenger title in Nebraska on Sunday after saving a championship point and coming through a three-set final against Mark Lajal. The 33-year-old, who had been weighing whether this season would be his last, closed out a 4-6 7-6 (7-4) 7-6 (7-3) victory that ended an eight-year wait for a Challenger Tour title.
The win matters now because it changes both the numbers beside Tomic’s name and the conversation around what comes next. He moved from world No. 206 to 170 in the live rankings after beating Lajal, the Estonian fifth seed who was No. 150, and the result came after Tomic had lost to Chris O'Connell 6-4 6-4 in second-round qualifying before the Lincoln Challenger even began.
For Tomic, this was more than a trophy. It was his first Challenger Tour title in eight years, and his previous title came in Mallorca, Spain, in 2018. He had also reached the final after beating Spencer Johnson 6-7 (7-5) 6-3 6-2, then carried that form into a final in which he hit nine aces and landed 72 per cent of first serves.
He has been far from the player who once climbed to a career high of 17 in 2016. Since 2024, he had lost his last three Challenger Tour finals, a run that made the Lincoln result feel like a correction as much as a breakthrough. Yet the win does not settle the question that has hung over him for weeks, because he had already said he was probably in his last year and would reassess things after this tournament.
That is the friction in Tomic’s story now: the title gives him a reason to stay in the game, but it does not force the decision. In his own words, he said he had been trying to win a Challenger for the last four years and now had “got to reassess things” and “try and have another crack.” With Keely Hannah having given birth to their daughter Astara in April, the next choice belongs to Tomic alone, and for now it is only clear that the ranking jump has reopened a door he had seemed ready to close.
