IRTPA

World Challenge Match Reports 2025

Tennis—WC2025

First Day: Camden Riviere -v- John Lumley 6-2, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4

Second Day:  5/6, 6/4, 6/4, 6/4

Camden Riviere retains his world title 7 sets to 1 set

The challenge has not been won in 2 days since 2006

On the scheduled 3rd day there will now be a doubles between the World Champion, Camden Riviere playing with Tony Hollins and the opposition will be John Lumley and Josh Smith.  Play starts at 14:30 EST

Our thanks to the USCTA and James Zug for the use of his reports and to Tim Edwards for his photography

Second Day

Camden Riviere beat John Lumley 5-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4.

He retained his world championship title 6-2, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4, 5-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4.

It was a slightly different Day Two at the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It had rained most of Wednesday and all Thursday morning, a steady downpour for much of the time. Humidity was at ninety-six percent. There was a worry of the walls sweating.

            Wednesday had been a busy off day. The Pineapple Cup, the handicap doubles event running in parallel with the Challenge, was in full swing. In the Casino Theatre Frederika Adam hosted a fifth international conference on the history of tennis. Speakers from around the world gave presentations on everything from archeological digs at French castles (who knew so many early tennis courts were in castle moats?) to the remarkable biography of Joseph Bickley, who had among forty-odd courts he worked on had actually remade the floor of the Newport court around 1910.

Many also gathered at the Newport Art Museum on Wednesday evening for the opening of “The Court: Art in Play.” One of the most extraordinary court tennis exhibitions the game has ever seen,, the museum, with Adam in the lead, had curated a few dozen works of art from the history of tennis. Some was brand new: a 2025 art book created by Elizabeth Curren and recent photographs and screen prints of Adam’s. Many were recent works of art that are now classics in the court tennis world: photographs by Charles Johnstone, Philip Howard and Adams; ink, paint and wax on linen images from Bill Sullivan; Joshua Mosley’s stop animation film; and Robert Manice’s watercolors. Some items were on loan from the International Tennis Hall of Fame’s collection: a Tom Pettitt racquet; the 1978 bronze bust, complete with a black beret, of Pierre Etchesaster; and most stunningly, two seventeenth century oil paintings of young people with tennis racquets. The exhibit, a can’t miss for any tennis aficionado, runs through the end of April 2026.

Tim Edwards, the British photographer, was quietly snapping photos at the museum opening. Edwards, a British photographer, has shot each Challenge since 2012. The USCTA awarded him the 2025 Plimpton Prize at Tuesday evening’s dinner at the Horseshoe.

The Challenge was again orchestrated by Susie Falkner, the chief executive of the International Real Tennis Professionals Association, who had run the World Championships since 2004. On the First Day expert commentary from their oubliette in the grille came from Adrian Kemp, a pro at the Racquet & Tennis Club, and Tony Hollins, the head pro at Newport who was also the tournament director; on the Second Day, Barney Tanfield, the head pro at the Racquet & Tennis Club, subbed in for Hollins.

Riviere came into Day Two with a massive lead. But not unsurmountable. The audience recalled what happened two years ago in the 2023 World Championship in Washington. Riviere won all four sets, relatively comfortably, on the First Day and then Lumley stormed back, taking three out of four on the Second Day (the last two sets at 6-5) to push it to a Third Day. That week Lumley wasn’t able to complete the comeback, winning one out of three sets on the Third Day.

It was a gigantic uphill task for anyone: no player had ever lost the first four sets in a Challenge and come back to win in the end. The best model was Tom Pettitt, the former head pro at Newport. In 1885 at Hampton Court, Pettitt lost three of the four first sets on the First Day and then the first two sets on the Second Day before remarkably reeling off six straight sets to capture the Challenge. At the same time, the odds Lumley to win two sets were definitely in his favor: every Challenge since 2006—eight in a row—had gone to a Third Day.

A few changes were evident as the players warmed up. Lumley didn’t have his watch on  his left wrist. The first six times Riviere challenged, he used the service side to store his racquets, towels and water for access during change overs. This year, for the first time, he had set up shop in the hazard side, the more traditional spot for the world champion.

The fifth set started off with a bang. Riviere slapped a main-wall force the first time he touched a ball in play. Lumley smacked a ball into the grille on the second point. Riviere on the third point hit a backwards forehand. The pace was furious and at one point Riviere was massaging his left shoulder, having twinged it apparently. Lumley sprinted to leads of 3-1 and 4-2, but Riviere stubbornly reeled him back. He knotted the score at 4-all, the third of four times at this Challenge when a set went to 4-4. Riviere got to five first by hitting two grilles in a row and then having switched sides he drilled a dedans to take the game at love. At 5-all. John went up 30-love. It went to deuce. Lumley bagged a grille and then at advantage, Riviere guarded the galleries playing off a chase and instead Lumley calmly lofted a soft straight force into the dedans to clinch the set.

            The stats for the best set of the Challenge: Riviere with three grilles and six dedans; Lumley with five grilles and three dedans. It lasted forty-three minutes.

            The sixth set had one-way traffic for much of the thirty-nine minutes. Lumley wasn’t aggressive enough and Riviere’s length was sometimes immaculate. Riviere leapt to a 5-2 lead. He was hitting a variety of serves: high drops from the main wall, a hard demi-pique, a lot of devilish bobbles for second serves. Lumley on the other hand mostly stuck to his railroad which again had fizz and bite. His second serve, however, was a defensive soft demi-pique that didn’t trouble Riviere in the slightest. Still, down 5-2, Lumley zoomed back. He saved two set points at 5-3 but couldn’t push it further at 5-4. Riviere had two grilles and four dedans; Lumley five grilles and three dedans.

            The seventh set lasted forty-six minutes and was full of targeting hitting: Riviere hit eleven grilles, six grilles and two winning galleries (nineteen galleries was perhaps his most ever for a set in a Challenge); Lumley totted up two grilles, two dedans and two winning galleries. Those numbers demonstrated how intent on ending points Riviere became in the set. Lumley was up 3-2 when a very long, tight game ensued in which Riviere battered three balls into the dedans. Up 4-3, Lumley was unable to find any breathing room. Both players blistered the ball. Lumley saved two set points but he couldn’t save the third.

            The beginning of the eighth set was quite flat, the end seemingly in sight. Riviere took the first two games in less than three minutes. Lumley won a long third game. Riviere ran rampant and pushed it to 5-1. (Totals were four grilles and six dedans for Riviere; five grilles, one dedan and two winning galleries for Lumley.) Lumley saved a championship point and tenaciously kept fighting. 5-2, 5-3, 5-4. (Total time for the set was forty-three minutes.) Was a comeback possible? Lumley saved two more championship points. Maybe. Then it was advantage Riviere and he was defending a chase worse than a yard. Impossible. Riviere won the point and almost immediately went to the net for a handshake: no celebration. Lumley and Riviere are close friends off the court. Afterwards, during the trophy celebration, both men were emotional. The Challenge is a challenge.

As David Foster Wallace wrote about Roger Federer two decades ago, this week those of us lucky enough to be in Newport saw close up power and aggression made vulnerable to beauty. And this helped us to be reconciled, in a human, mortal way, with this thing called life.

First Day

This was the sixty-third playing of the open World Championship, dating back to the first recorded Challenge in 1816. But in the past thirty years, world championships are a common occurrence here at the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, RI. In 2004 and 2016 the open Challenge was here; and the women’s World Championship was here in 1995, 2009 and in 2025. The glorious summer of 2025 started with the women and is ending with the men. In the past thirty years, no other single-court club in the world has hosted as many world championships as Newport.

            Unlike two years ago, when Camden Scott Riviere and John Colin Lumley faced each other in Washington, the world champion was coming into the Challenge without a sheen of invincibility. Riviere’s win streak in best of five set matches, dating back to January 2013, had just ended at the 2025 U.S. Open at forty-four straight tournaments, including twelve consecutive U.S Opens.

Riviere’s handicap coming into the match today was 18.5+, the highest ever for him (everyone’s handicap was boosted by two points in August). But the litany of injuries and illnesses over the years—including wrist, shoulder, Lyme’s, ankle—was large and the latest, a torn labrum in both hips, was a serious concern for the thirty-eight-year-old.

            Lumley, on the other hand, was looking fit and confident. He was thirty-three and recently engaged to be married. He was a 15.3+, also his best handicap ever. His 2025 U.S. Open run in late February and early March in Washington was historic. In the semis, he topped a resurgent Rob Fahey 6-5 in the fifth; Lumley blew one match point, then heartstoppingly saved three of Fahey’s before taking the epic match. In the finals against Riviere, Lumley scrambled back after losing the first two sets. In the third set, he squandered three set points but finally took it 6-5. The fourth was easy but in the fifth, it again got tight, with Lumley losing four match points before clinching it 6-4.

It was a summery September afternoon at the International Tennis Hall of Fame when the tennis world gathered for the Challenge. It was in the mid-seventies and eighty percent humidity, with a blustery wind. The heat was significant. Two fans were on, one at the winning gallery and one at last gallery and often in between points the only thing you could hear was the susurrating whir of the fan. (The last gallery fan was turned off in the second set.)

The galleries were filled (perhaps slightly less than in 2016) and many leaders on and off the court were present, including two former world singles champions (Rob Fahey and Penny Lumley) but still there were missing some regulars. Alistair Curley, the Scot turned Aussie had attended every Challenge since his first in 1991 in New York—eighteen in a row—as a spectator, as a training partner and most recently as the emcee, but he was back in Melbourne. The most regular spectator might have been the only Australian in the audience: Michael Wooldridge who has made more than a dozen, including every Challenge after 2006. It seemed no one from France was on site at all.

Missy Keene gave a very rousing rendition of the two national anthems of both the UK and USA. Then the warmup began. Riviere called heads on the coin toss and it was tails. After the warmup, the match began. Both players were wearing identical black K-Swiss sneakers with green piping. Riviere wore black socks with a polka-dot pattern, sweatbands on both wrists and a white shirt. Lumley had compression sleeves on his right arm and right leg.

Both men played with Wayward racquets, Lumley played with a blue-and-yellow racquet (sort of UCLA colors) labeled with Norty Knox’s name. Riviere had a red bat with a new logo of Ivan Ronaldson’s gamer handle LobsterRescue, a wonderful way to honor the Washington professional who suddenly died a month ago. Both players had the Wayward logo on their shirts. It was a historic moment: it was probably the first time since the nineteenth century that neither player in the World Championship played with a Gray’s racquet.

The match was streamed by Ryan Carey. It was his third Challenge. He had installed more than a dozen cameras around the court; the dedans bristled with nine. Darren Long, now at Moreton Morrell, made the balls for the second straight Challenge. Neil Mackenzie, of Queen’s Club, was the marker and Josh Smith, of Newport, was the marker’s assistant up in the clerestory.

The first set was the shortest of the day, lasting just twenty-seven minutes. Lumley took the first game and the sixth game but otherwise it was mostly one-way traffic for Riviere. Nerves took a few games to settle and both had numerous unforced errors and balls up on the penthouse, but Riviere settled in much sooner than Lumley. Both players struggled to find winning openings: Lumley got three grilles but not a single dedan; Riviere totalled two grilles and three dedans. Both hit railroads as first serves. Lumley’s got more effective as the set went on, but his second serve, a demi-pique didn’t trouble Riviere at all and he often turned on it to hit a punishing forehand.

The match tightened in the thirty-four-minute second set. Lumley’s supporters, led by a vocal Henry Smith, gave Lumley some energy and he jumped out to a 3-1 lead. Riviere methodically pegged him back and won five games on the trot. It was vintage Riviere at times. It wasn’t just his world-class quickness and his brilliant kinesthetic sense of balance. His anticipation was extraordinary, and at Newport he often was onto balls incredibly early and digging out miraculous balls that surely would bounce twice. He seemed to instantly process a hundred data points and possibilities—Lumley’s body movements, the spin of the ball, cut and speed—and move effortlessly to the right spot. He floated at times, with a preternatural grace, towards an impossible shot and returned it, with venom.

Second set openings: Riviere had five grilles and two dedans; Lumley three grilles, two dedans and the match’s first winning gallery. But Lumley wasn’t precise enough, especially with his backhand. He wouldn’t end points quickly enough and eventually Riviere’s relentless retrieving took a toll.

The third set, forty-three minutes, was even closer. Neither player got more than a single game ahead. Riviere’s railroads tightened up. Lumley finally attacked the openings: he had four grilles and six dedans (Riviere had five grilles and four dedans). Two of the dedans came on consecutive points to even the score at 2-2. A massive game ensued at 4-4, with Riviere saving game balls before pushing it through and taking the set 6-4. There was a long bathroom break after the third set, with Riviere changing both his shirt and his sneakers to sweating.

The last set, as usual on the First Day of a Challenge, was a must-win for both players. It was an absolute humdinger that had forty-six minutes of scintillating play. Riviere hopped out to a 3-1 lead. Then his left-hand cramped and the southpaw took a four-minute injury timeout. Throughout the rest of the set, he grimaced and shook his hand, even during points. Lumley was first out of the gate after the break. Again, the score was knotted at 4-4. Again, the player who could end points would win games. Openings tally: Riviere had four grilles and six dedans; Lumley had two grilles, four dedans and a stunning five winning galleries.

Just like the previous set, Riviere pushed through on the last two games and clinched the set. The two men were closely matched but Riviere was just a tiny bit better—his experience from having played in six previous Challenges?—and that made all the difference in the scoreline.