Bubka Junior reveals five-year plan to break into top 100

Dubai: Sergei Bubka's mission to forge his own identity as a tennis player, despite constant reference to his famous polevaulting father of the same name, is beginning to find momentum.

The 24-year-old Ukrainian popped by Gulf News offices on Tuesday to try his hand at guest-editing tabloid! Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships supplement, The Daily Deuce, but also found time to talk about his surprise progress into the second round of the tournament having entered as a wildcard.

Currently 342 in the ATP world rankings and not able to qualify due to his position, Bubka accepted an invite into the qualifiers and went onto beat two Italians, Simone Bolelli and Paolo Lorenzi in the first and second rounds of qualifying, respectively.

Really happy

Bubka junior then made his debut in a main-round ATP 500 Series event on Monday with first phase victory over Croatia's Ivan Ljubicic. Bubka won the first set 6-1, but a right knee injury to Ljubicic forced retirement. He now plays Richard Gasquet of France in the second round today.

"I'm really happy to have made it through to the second round but unfortunately Ivan was injured and had to retire so it wasn't a very nice way to win," Bubka told Gulf News.

"I've made it to the first round of an ATP 500 Series event for the first time so it's a good result and my ranking will go up. That's what I need at the moment points and match play, the more the better."

Of his second round fixture with Gasquet, Bubka said: "He's the favourite but I have nothing to lose. I'm just going to try and focus on the game and do my best — I don't want to focus on results. I just want to have fun and take it one match at a time."

Main spur

Bubka said his five-year plan consists of breaking into the world's top 100 and after that nothing will be good enough in terms of improvement. The main spur to succeed, he said: "is to be recognised as a tennis player rather than being always mentioned as the son of a great pole vaulter."

Of his famous father, who won six World Championship golds, four Indoor Championship gold's, one European Championship gold and one Olympic gold as well as breaking 35 world records between 1983 and 1997, Bubka said: "I could have gone into athletics but I didn't want to be directly compared to him, it looks like he set the bar pretty high. There's a lot of cross-over between athletics and tennis, running, jumping — but you can also compare pole vaulting to tennis more specifically in that you have three attempts and still have a chance to win even at the last — he taught me that if I can beat myself I can beat anyone."