Romania’s best tennis player wanders through Rwanda. He barely had enough money for the return ticket

March 11, 2026

While the world tennis caravan is performing at the ATP 1,000 tournament in Indian Wells, Filip Jianu, Romania’s best racket, is performing at a challenger tournament in Rwanda, from Kigali.

In the first round, Jianu had today a Dutchman from the qualifications, Ryan Nijboer (26 years old, 524 ATP), score 7-6 (5), 7-5, after two hours and 17 minutes of play.

In the next round, Jianu will meet the Finnish Eero Vasa (29 years old, 482 ATP), who, at the beginning of the month, was defeated by another Romanian in Kigali, Nicholas David Ionel (23 years old, 615 ATP), score 6-4, 6-2. The challenger tournament Kigali 2 comes after Kigali 1.

The Rwanda Challenger 2 tournament is played on clay and has a total prize pool of $177,000. For qualifying to the second round (round of 16), Jianu earned $3,060 and 7 ATP points.

At the moment, Romania does not have any player ranked among the top 200 tennis players in the world.

Adrian Stoica

Adrian is the founder and the visionary behind Cluj Napoca, a media platform committed to capturing and sharing the vibrant stories of Cluj-Napoca and Romania with an international audience. A graduate in international journalism from the University of Bucharest and holder of a Master’s in Cultural Studies from Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Adrian has a robust educational background that equips him to understand and analyze the complexities of his native region's culture and history.