TOUR DE FORCE
12/11/2023 10:14:00 AM | Men's Tennis
Former Baylor doubles All-American Frantzen up to No. 65 in the world
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
Constantin Frantzen's "childhood dream" was no different than most aspiring tennis players, imagining himself playing on the grass Centre Court at Wimbledon, the clay courts at Roland Garros or the hard surfaces at the Australian or U.S. Open tournaments.
"I feel like everyone's childhood dream is to play the Grand Slams in singles, not doubles," Frantzen said.
At next month's Australian Open in Melbourne, part of that dream will come true when the former Baylor All-American is paired with fellow German Hendrik Jebens in his first Grand Slam tournament.
"I'm super-pumped," said Frantzen, who earned his undergrad degree in marketing from Baylor in Summer 2020 and then his master's in sport management in December 2021. "We are 100% guaranteed to play with the ranking that we have right now. (Jebens) is 62nd and I'm 65 (in the ATP world doubles rankings). It feels so surreal to play my first Grand Slam, because that's always something I dreamed about."
And while his original dream was to play a Grand Slam singles event, "I actually prefer (doubles) now because it's more fun doing it with a partner. It's like being on a team."
"Like when I was at Baylor, it was always fun playing not for myself but for the team and for the school," said Frantzen, who was part of Baylor's 2021 team that lost to Florida in the NCAA Championship finals. "And now, I'm playing with my partner together. That's something really cool and unique. Obviously, the goal is to play all of them, to keep climbing the rankings."
Coni always believed he had the potential to play professional tennis. Even before he came to Baylor, Frantzen was ranked No. 6 in Germany in U18 singles and won an ITF Futures event in Ismaning, Germany, with Austrian Alexander Erler when he was 17 years old.
Playing under three different head coaches at Baylor (2016-21), Frantzen broke Benjamin Becker's all-time school record with 112 career doubles victories. That included a run at the 2021 NCAA Championships, when Frantzen and Sven Lah reached the semifinals before losing to Pat Harper and Adam Walton of Tennessee, 7-5, 6-4.
Coming off a shoulder injury in his fourth year at Baylor, Coni wasn't even sure he was going to play in 2020-21 and was essentially limited to doubles. While he was 23-11 in doubles that year with six different partners, Frantzen played only nine singles matches and had a career record of 79-38.
"I was just focusing on coming back and playing doubles," he said. "And I think it helped a lot that in college, you only play one set (in doubles). We didn't play our best level at the beginning, which is normal because I was out for such a long time.
"That entire time at Baylor helped me grow a lot because I've been through a lot with three different head coaches. The coaching styles and development were different from coach to coach. I think I learned a lot from that, which is still helping me a lot now, on the tour."
After that historic 2021 season, which included a program-record 34 dual-match team wins, Big 12 regular-season and tournament titles and the Bears' first trip to the NCAA final in 16 years, Coni stayed in school to finish his master's degree in December 2021.
"That fifth year gave me a new perspective that I could do it in doubles," Frantzen said. "And then also, we had a couple of good German doubles players (Kevin Krawietz and Andreas Mies) which at the time were top-20 in the world and had just won a couple of Grand Slams. I think that was also a little factor which helped my mind to think about turning pro because I saw that they were able to play tennis and basically do it as a job while playing doubles. You look back 20 years ago, doubles players were not able to make a living. And now, they are."
That fall, Frantzen made it to the finals in a pair of Futures events, with Lah in Lubbock and former Baylor teammate Adrian Boitan in Harlingen. Still, his doubles ranking in January 2022 was 1135.
In his first full season, Frantzen played with 10 different partners, paired with former Baylor teammate Charlie Broom and former Ole Miss All-American Tim Sandkaulen the most. And while he struggled at the beginning of the year and "wasn't really consistent," he made it to 10 Futures finals, won four titles and saw his ranking jump all the way to No. 183.
"I feel like getting a partner and playing with a partner consistently is the key, because that's how you can improve," he said. "It was the same at Baylor and playing with Sven. When we played together week-in and week-out, we improved the most. Just the communication on court gets way better. Obviously, it can work sometimes when you play with some guy you don't know, it can click for a week. But it doesn't usually click for weeks in a row."
While Frantzen made a dramatic jump in the rankings last year, the 2023 season has unquestionably been his best.
Paired with Jebens for the majority of the year, the duo won six Challenger titles together, played in 12-consecutive tournaments over the last three months and got to the main draw of five ATP Tour events. They finished the year ranked 22nd in the Pepperstone ATP Doubles Teams Rankings.
Coni made his ATP Tour main draw debut in July at the Swiss Open Gstaad, but bowed out in the first round with a pair of tiebreak losses after Jebens suffered a broken left thumb.
"The next week, we actually received a wildcard from the German Federation into Hamburg, which is an ATP 500 (tournament)," he said. "It was kind of disappointing for us, because we played pretty well up to that point, and we couldn't really play. It's tough when your partner can't hit a backhand. We also played the Belgium team (Sander Gille and Joran Vliegen) that had just made the final at Roland Garros. Against those guys, you need to be 100%."
With Hendrik taking about a month to recover, Frantzen played with a couple different partners and made the semifinals of a $118,000 Challenger in Bosnia & Herzegovina with Petr Nouza of the Czech Republic.
Turning down a chance to play in the U.S. Open when Jebens returned from the thumb injury, the doubles team went to Coni's hometown of Augsburg, Germany, instead to play in a $36,000 Challenger, the Schwaben Open.
The top seeds, Frantzen and Jebens survived a pair of third-set super tiebreaks before a straight-set win in the semifinals and then beat Constantin Bittoun Kouzmine and Volodoymyr Uzhylovskyi, 6-2, 6-2, in the final.
"Four years ago, I actually played my first Challenger there, when I received a main-draw wildcard to play with my best friend, Luca Wiedenmann," Frantzen said. "It was super-fun playing at home in front of my family. Fun fact, my parents had never seen me win a match on the ATP Challenger level. And that week, I actually managed to win the tournament.
"Looking at my entire season now, I would say (winning in Augsburg) is probably one of my highlights, just because of the meaning of the tournament and playing in front of family."
The career highlight, though, came about three months later at the $630,000 Moselle Open in Metz, France. Frantzen and Jebens won a pair of straight-setters, beating No. 3 seeds Lloyd Glasspool and former Baylor All-American John Peers in the quarterfinals, before a hard-fought 7-6, 6-7, 10-5 win over No. 2 seeds Harri Heliovaara and Andreas Mies to make their first ATP Tour final.
Top seeds Hugo Nys and Jan Zielinski got one service break in each set to defend their Moselle Open title with a 6-4, 6-4 win in the championship.
"That was a big highlight," Frantzen said, "because we had never won a round on the ATP level, and we managed to make the finals right away. That was big for us."
While Coni has been gone for two years, he remains in close contact with Baylor head coach Michael Woodson and associate head coach Izak van der Merwe.
"I get a lot of insights from Izak, because he played professionally and he has so much knowledge," Frantzen said. "My relationship with Mike, since Day 1, hasn't changed. I'm in contact with him on a daily basis. And it means so much to me that they're still supporting me and helping me in any way possible. Without Izak and Mike, I probably wouldn't be playing tennis right now."
Coni said he is hoping to play in the ATP Dallas Open in February and get down to Waco to see a Baylor team that includes his younger brother, senior Christopher Frantzen.
"I think he gets more nervous than anyone from my family," Coni said of Chris. "Sometimes, he says he can't watch my matches because he gets so nervous. When he doesn't text me after I win the first-round match, he won't text me the next match and he'll wait until I finish the week."
Baylor Bear Insider
Constantin Frantzen's "childhood dream" was no different than most aspiring tennis players, imagining himself playing on the grass Centre Court at Wimbledon, the clay courts at Roland Garros or the hard surfaces at the Australian or U.S. Open tournaments.
"I feel like everyone's childhood dream is to play the Grand Slams in singles, not doubles," Frantzen said.At next month's Australian Open in Melbourne, part of that dream will come true when the former Baylor All-American is paired with fellow German Hendrik Jebens in his first Grand Slam tournament.
"I'm super-pumped," said Frantzen, who earned his undergrad degree in marketing from Baylor in Summer 2020 and then his master's in sport management in December 2021. "We are 100% guaranteed to play with the ranking that we have right now. (Jebens) is 62nd and I'm 65 (in the ATP world doubles rankings). It feels so surreal to play my first Grand Slam, because that's always something I dreamed about."
And while his original dream was to play a Grand Slam singles event, "I actually prefer (doubles) now because it's more fun doing it with a partner. It's like being on a team."
"Like when I was at Baylor, it was always fun playing not for myself but for the team and for the school," said Frantzen, who was part of Baylor's 2021 team that lost to Florida in the NCAA Championship finals. "And now, I'm playing with my partner together. That's something really cool and unique. Obviously, the goal is to play all of them, to keep climbing the rankings."
Coni always believed he had the potential to play professional tennis. Even before he came to Baylor, Frantzen was ranked No. 6 in Germany in U18 singles and won an ITF Futures event in Ismaning, Germany, with Austrian Alexander Erler when he was 17 years old.
Playing under three different head coaches at Baylor (2016-21), Frantzen broke Benjamin Becker's all-time school record with 112 career doubles victories. That included a run at the 2021 NCAA Championships, when Frantzen and Sven Lah reached the semifinals before losing to Pat Harper and Adam Walton of Tennessee, 7-5, 6-4.
Coming off a shoulder injury in his fourth year at Baylor, Coni wasn't even sure he was going to play in 2020-21 and was essentially limited to doubles. While he was 23-11 in doubles that year with six different partners, Frantzen played only nine singles matches and had a career record of 79-38.
"I was just focusing on coming back and playing doubles," he said. "And I think it helped a lot that in college, you only play one set (in doubles). We didn't play our best level at the beginning, which is normal because I was out for such a long time.
"That entire time at Baylor helped me grow a lot because I've been through a lot with three different head coaches. The coaching styles and development were different from coach to coach. I think I learned a lot from that, which is still helping me a lot now, on the tour."
After that historic 2021 season, which included a program-record 34 dual-match team wins, Big 12 regular-season and tournament titles and the Bears' first trip to the NCAA final in 16 years, Coni stayed in school to finish his master's degree in December 2021.
"That fifth year gave me a new perspective that I could do it in doubles," Frantzen said. "And then also, we had a couple of good German doubles players (Kevin Krawietz and Andreas Mies) which at the time were top-20 in the world and had just won a couple of Grand Slams. I think that was also a little factor which helped my mind to think about turning pro because I saw that they were able to play tennis and basically do it as a job while playing doubles. You look back 20 years ago, doubles players were not able to make a living. And now, they are."
That fall, Frantzen made it to the finals in a pair of Futures events, with Lah in Lubbock and former Baylor teammate Adrian Boitan in Harlingen. Still, his doubles ranking in January 2022 was 1135.
In his first full season, Frantzen played with 10 different partners, paired with former Baylor teammate Charlie Broom and former Ole Miss All-American Tim Sandkaulen the most. And while he struggled at the beginning of the year and "wasn't really consistent," he made it to 10 Futures finals, won four titles and saw his ranking jump all the way to No. 183.
"I feel like getting a partner and playing with a partner consistently is the key, because that's how you can improve," he said. "It was the same at Baylor and playing with Sven. When we played together week-in and week-out, we improved the most. Just the communication on court gets way better. Obviously, it can work sometimes when you play with some guy you don't know, it can click for a week. But it doesn't usually click for weeks in a row."
While Frantzen made a dramatic jump in the rankings last year, the 2023 season has unquestionably been his best.
Paired with Jebens for the majority of the year, the duo won six Challenger titles together, played in 12-consecutive tournaments over the last three months and got to the main draw of five ATP Tour events. They finished the year ranked 22nd in the Pepperstone ATP Doubles Teams Rankings.
Coni made his ATP Tour main draw debut in July at the Swiss Open Gstaad, but bowed out in the first round with a pair of tiebreak losses after Jebens suffered a broken left thumb.
"The next week, we actually received a wildcard from the German Federation into Hamburg, which is an ATP 500 (tournament)," he said. "It was kind of disappointing for us, because we played pretty well up to that point, and we couldn't really play. It's tough when your partner can't hit a backhand. We also played the Belgium team (Sander Gille and Joran Vliegen) that had just made the final at Roland Garros. Against those guys, you need to be 100%."
With Hendrik taking about a month to recover, Frantzen played with a couple different partners and made the semifinals of a $118,000 Challenger in Bosnia & Herzegovina with Petr Nouza of the Czech Republic.
Turning down a chance to play in the U.S. Open when Jebens returned from the thumb injury, the doubles team went to Coni's hometown of Augsburg, Germany, instead to play in a $36,000 Challenger, the Schwaben Open.
The top seeds, Frantzen and Jebens survived a pair of third-set super tiebreaks before a straight-set win in the semifinals and then beat Constantin Bittoun Kouzmine and Volodoymyr Uzhylovskyi, 6-2, 6-2, in the final.
"Four years ago, I actually played my first Challenger there, when I received a main-draw wildcard to play with my best friend, Luca Wiedenmann," Frantzen said. "It was super-fun playing at home in front of my family. Fun fact, my parents had never seen me win a match on the ATP Challenger level. And that week, I actually managed to win the tournament.
"Looking at my entire season now, I would say (winning in Augsburg) is probably one of my highlights, just because of the meaning of the tournament and playing in front of family."
The career highlight, though, came about three months later at the $630,000 Moselle Open in Metz, France. Frantzen and Jebens won a pair of straight-setters, beating No. 3 seeds Lloyd Glasspool and former Baylor All-American John Peers in the quarterfinals, before a hard-fought 7-6, 6-7, 10-5 win over No. 2 seeds Harri Heliovaara and Andreas Mies to make their first ATP Tour final.
Top seeds Hugo Nys and Jan Zielinski got one service break in each set to defend their Moselle Open title with a 6-4, 6-4 win in the championship.
"That was a big highlight," Frantzen said, "because we had never won a round on the ATP level, and we managed to make the finals right away. That was big for us."
While Coni has been gone for two years, he remains in close contact with Baylor head coach Michael Woodson and associate head coach Izak van der Merwe.
"I get a lot of insights from Izak, because he played professionally and he has so much knowledge," Frantzen said. "My relationship with Mike, since Day 1, hasn't changed. I'm in contact with him on a daily basis. And it means so much to me that they're still supporting me and helping me in any way possible. Without Izak and Mike, I probably wouldn't be playing tennis right now."
Coni said he is hoping to play in the ATP Dallas Open in February and get down to Waco to see a Baylor team that includes his younger brother, senior Christopher Frantzen.
"I think he gets more nervous than anyone from my family," Coni said of Chris. "Sometimes, he says he can't watch my matches because he gets so nervous. When he doesn't text me after I win the first-round match, he won't text me the next match and he'll wait until I finish the week."
Players Mentioned
/ Men's Tennis
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