South Africa’s Lloyd Harris won the 2026 Jingshan Open in Hubei, China, on Sunday 4 October, beating Italy’s Mattia Bellucci 1-6, 6-3, 7-6(4) after saving two championship points in the deciding set. Bellucci had both chances on Harris’s serve at 5-6, and Harris held, forced the tie-break and won it 7-4 to close out the final in about two hours and 20 minutes.
According to GoTennis match stats, Bellucci won more points and made more breaks of serve than the champion, and he won more games across the three sets. Harris converted two of his three break points.
“Never count him out. Lloyd Harris saves TWO championship points before battling past Bellucci in three sets.” – ATP Challenger
How The Final Turned
Bellucci, a left-hander ranked around No. 91 who had come through qualifying, took the first set 6-1. Harris was the No. 6 seed at No. 125. He levelled the match 6-3 in the second set.
The third set swung twice. Harris led 5-4, Bellucci broke back to 5-5 and then went ahead 6-5, which is what set up the two championship points.
The Match In Numbers
| Stat | Lloyd Harris | Mattia Bellucci |
|---|---|---|
| Points won | 86 | 89 |
| Games won | 14 | 15 |
| Aces | 4 | 5 |
| Double faults | 1 | 2 |
| Breaks of serve | 2 | 3 |
Who Did Lloyd Harris Beat To Reach The 2026 Jingshan Open Final?
Harris’s five wins:
- Round of 32: beat Alexis Galarneau of Canada 6-2, 6-3
- Round of 16: beat Luka Pavlovic of France 6-2, 6-3
- Quarter-final: beat Andre Ilagan of the United States 7-5, 6-1
- Semi-final: beat seventh seed Alex Bolt of Australia 5-7, 7-6(2), with Bolt retiring injured with a right-leg problem
- Final: beat Mattia Bellucci 1-6, 6-3, 7-6(4)
Bellucci’s run:
- Qualifying: beat Peliwo 6-2, 6-4 and Saitoh 6-2, 6-2
- Main draw: beat Alexandre Muller 6-0, 6-3 and Adam Walton 7-5, 6-2
- Bernard Tomic retired against him in the next round
- Semi-final: beat Yanki Erel 6-4, 6-4
Harris dropped one set before the final, the first against Bolt. It is the second Challenger final the 25-year-old Bellucci has lost this season.
The two had met once before, in Roland Garros qualifying in 2024 on clay, where Bellucci won 6-1, 7-6(11-9). This was their first meeting on a hard court and it levels the head-to-head at 1-1.
A Tenth Challenger Title And A Fourth In 2026
This is the tenth ATP Challenger title of Harris’s career. The other three this year came at Soma Bay in January, Tenerife Challenger 2 in February, where he beat Alejandro Moro Cañas 7-5, 7-5, and Brownsburg in August.
The 2026 Jingshan Open is an ATP Challenger 100, the tier below the main ATP Tour, and the win earns Harris 100 ranking points and $26,130. It ran on outdoor hard courts from roughly 28 September to 4 October, with total prize money of about US$177,000.
The 29-year-old from Cape Town reached a career-high No. 31 in the world. He had surgery in 2024 for an L4/L5 disc herniation and returned in 2025, and the ATP called his Tenerife title in February a “stepping stone in a new career”.
A week before Jingshan he qualified for the ATP 250 Chengdu Open and reached the quarter-finals, where Hubert Hurkacz beat him 7-6(10), 6-4 on 27 September. Hurkacz called him “such a great player” afterwards and said he was serving very well.
Harris also lost in the Jingshan quarter-finals in 2025, to Eliot Spizzirri, who went on to win the title.
