Juan Ignacio Chela Argentinian Tennis Player Born in 1979

Early life

Juan Ignacio Chela was born on 30 August 1979 in Ciudad Evita, Argentina. He stands 190 centimetres tall and became known on the circuit by the nicknames "El Flaco" and "Liliano". He is a former professional tennis player who later moved into coaching.

Career

In 2001 he received a three-month suspension from the tour after a routine test taken in August 2000 came back positive for the banned steroid methyltestosterone. The ruling also cost him the prize money and ranking points he had collected in the months since the test.

His best period came after the suspension. In 2004 he reached the quarterfinals of the French Open, losing to Tim Henman, and on 9 August that year he reached his career-high singles ranking of world number 15. He also played doubles regularly in these seasons, often with fellow Argentines such as Gastón Gaudio, Guillermo Cañas and Nicolás Massú. With Massú he reached the doubles final in Acapulco in 2004.

Chela was a regular member of Argentina's Davis Cup squad. In April 2006 he won the deciding third point in the quarterfinal against Croatia, the defending champions, and his record in the competition at that time stood at six wins and four defeats.

The 2007 season produced several of his strongest results. At the Rome Masters in May he reached the quarterfinals, his best showing at any of the six Masters events where he had by then reached that stage, beating Marc Gicquel, Igor Andreev and the world number three, Andy Roddick. That win over Roddick was his best result since a victory over Yevgeny Kafelnikov, then ranked third, in Mallorca in 2000. In July he reached the semifinals in Stuttgart, where he lost to Stan Wawrinka, and at the US Open he advanced to the quarterfinals before losing to David Ferrer. He added a quarterfinal in Vienna in October, losing a close match to Novak Djokovic.

In 2008 he reached the semifinals in Buenos Aires, where David Nalbandian beat him, and the quarterfinals in Barcelona, where he lost to Rafael Nadal. A year later he played mostly on the Challenger circuit.

He returned to the title stage in 2010. In Houston he won the US Men's Clay Court Championship, defeating Sam Querrey in the final, after beating the defending champion Lleyton Hewitt in the quarterfinals. It was his first ATP Tour title in more than three years. Later that season he won the BCR Open Romania, beating Pablo Andújar in the final, and took the doubles title there with Łukasz Kubot. The Romanian title was his sixth in singles and his third in doubles. In the same year he reached the semifinals of the Wimbledon doubles event with Eduardo Schwank.

In 2011 he lost the Buenos Aires final to Nicolás Almagro and reached the doubles final in Monte Carlo with Bruno Soares. He made the French Open quarterfinals for a second time, losing to Andy Murray, and on 6 June 2011 he reached his best doubles ranking, world number 32. In 2012 he won no tour finals but reached the singles semifinals in Viña del Mar and the doubles semifinals in Acapulco with Schwank.

Over his career Chela played twelve ATP singles finals, winning six of them, and six doubles finals, winning three.