After someone wins his first career Tour-level title, the ATP website writes a “First-Time Winner Spotlight” article. The articles are usually nice, enjoyable, and informative. But I think Victor Estrella-Burgos deserves a little more. 

First of all, it cannot be understated what he is doing for tennis in the Dominican Republic. It's not only about the record books, which he is entirely writing in his country. Estrella is the highest-ranked Dominican player in history and the only one to ever reach the top 100. He is the only player in his country's history to ever win an ATP title or a Challenger title, although Jose Hernandez is looking to catch him soon in that regard. He was the first to ever reach a Tour-level semifinal last year in Bogota and now is the first to win a tournament. If you read Estrella's quotes in the ATP article, it's clear that tennis is growing. 

This is generally true of most small countries (in terms of tennis history) that have a player break through and start making news. We saw this with doubles players Leander Paes, Rohan Bopanna, and Mahesh Bhupathi from India. We see it in Israel with Dudi Sela. Kei Nishikori in Japan and Li Na in China are probably the two best examples of this trend we can find. The fact is that it is good for the sport of tennis worldwide when a player from an unheard-of country in tennis terms moves into the spotlight. It gives the country a new sport to be interested in, which drives up interest in both watching and playing tennis, which eventually leads to more talented players coming out of that country. 

Estrella has been a professional tennis player for 13 years now. At the age of 34, he became the oldest player in history to win his first career title. He is now barely outside the top 50, but that doesn't paint a clear enough picture of just how far he has come to reach this point. 

We have to realize just how difficult it is as a young player in a country like the Dominican Republic. Estrella is actually a bit fortunate, since the Dominican Republic has had three Futures tournaments every year during his career. This gave him a chance to earn some ranking points (and a negligible amount of cash) close to home. Still, aside from those, any competitive tournament is an international flight away. If he wants to compete in Challengers, he is flying all the way to the United States or to South America. The fact that Florida has several Challenger tournaments is also quite fortunate. 

Estrella fought his way through as a mediocre Challenger player since 2007. His ranking hung around somewhere between 200 and 300 and he constantly struggled to work and stay on the tour. If not for those Futures tournaments near home, in which he has won 10 titles, and some other well-placed Futures tournaments throughout the years, I don't know that Estrella would have been able to keep his ranking high enough to stay on the Challenger Tour consistently. He did not reach his first Challenger semifinal until 2010 in Leon, Mexico. Three more semifinals followed in 2011, which he capped off with his first career Challenger title in Medellin, Colombia in November. 

Since then, Estrella has only been on the way up. What he has done is absolutely astounding. He refused to leave after a potentially career-ending injury in 2012 and came back right where he left off. He qualified for the Challenger Tour Finals last year, winning two round-robin matches before losing in the semifinals to Guilherme Clezar in an epic third-set tiebreak. Estrella is not a young player, but he could fool you watching him on court. I don't know how much longer he plans on playing for, but I can't wait to see just how high he can go in the years he has left.