Q&A with Dudi Sela

© Marco MaximoDudi Sela reached a career-high World No. 29 in the South African Airways ATP Rankings in 2009.

Israel's Dudi Sela is looking to return to the top form that took him to the Top 30 of the South African Airways ATP Rankings two years ago. This week the World No. 95 is the fourth seed at the inaugural ATP Challenger Tour Finals in Sao Paulo, having won three ATP Challenger Tour titles during the season.

ATPWorldTour.com caught up with Sela on Wednesday in Sao Paulo to get his thoughts on the first edition of the ATP Challenger Tour Finals and his expectations for next year.

What's your impression of the ATP Challenger Tour Finals?
It's very nice, something special. It's not every week you play a round robin tournament, with eight great players. All the players are trying to reach the semi-finals, so I think it's a good idea by the ATP.

What do you think about Sao Paulo as the venue of the inaugural edition?
I haven't been in South America in a long time so it's nice to be back. I like to play indoors and also in Brazil with a great court. I like it.

With your ATP World Tour experience -Top 30 in 2009 - and your good results on hard courts, do you think you have a chance to win the tournament?
There are many good players here. I won a very tough first match against [Cedrik-Marcel] Stebe today. All the players are good. Hopefully I'm going to keep my level very high and try to win the tournament.

How can the ATP Challenger Tour help you to regain your best form?
It's the last tournament of the year for me, good points, and if I make it to the final or win it I can get into bigger tournaments. It's nice that the ATP made a tournament to help the players that compete in many Challengers and it will help them lot.

How important is the ATP Challenger Tour to get prepared for the bigger tournaments?
If you combine ATP and Challengers it's a good system. Sometimes with my ranking I don't want to play the qualifying in big tournaments so I go to play a Challenger and try to do well. I tried to mix it up and got some good results and hopefully next year I will make it to bigger tournaments.