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If you look only at the ranking attached to the acceptance list, you risk missing half the story. At the Levante Open 2026 there are players who have already spent considerable time on the ATP Tour, others knocking on the door of the Top 100 and a 19-year-old who won the first Challenger title of his career only a few weeks ago.
That is the best place to start when reading the Bari field. Not with a list of favourites — the draw has not been made yet and inventing one would be premature — but with a few names who, because of their experience, clay-court record or current form, are worth watching.
Roberto Carballes Baena: the strongest résumé
Roberto Carballes Baena is one of those players whose entry-list ranking does not tell the full story. He is listed at No. 209 in Bari, but the Spaniard has climbed as high as No. 49 in the ATP Rankings. He has won two ATP Tour titles, in Quito in 2018 and Marrakech in 2023, both on clay.
The surface is not a minor detail in his case. The ATP lists clay as his favourite surface, and a significant part of the best results of his career has come on it. For a tournament like Bari, played entirely on outdoor clay, he is impossible to ignore.
Above all, Carballes Baena brings something that cannot be measured by the number next to his name: experience. He has played Grand Slams, ATP Masters 1000s, ATP Tour events and hundreds of Challenger matches. In a 32-player draw, knowing how to manage the messy moments of a match can matter as much as producing your best tennis.
Maxim Mrva arrives in Bari with something new in his pocket
The name most easily associated with the word “prospect” is Maxim Mrva. The Czech is 19 years old and appears on the Levante Open acceptance list at No. 212, just one place off his career high of 211.
But another figure is even more interesting. On 17 August 2026 in Todi, Mrva won the first Challenger title of his career. He did not drop a set during the tournament and defeated Nicolas Kicker 6-2, 6-2 in the final. Bari therefore comes a little more than a month after that week.
That does not mean he should automatically be considered a favourite. It does mean he arrives with a recent result on the same surface as the Levante Open and with a ranking touching the highest point of his young career. Those are two concrete reasons to keep an eye on him.
Elmer Moller heads the list. And he already knows how to win on clay
Elmer Moller is the first name on the acceptance list, shown at No. 170. The Dane has already reached No. 102 in the ATP Rankings and in 2026 has appeared more consistently at tour level as well.
There is also a figure that makes his profile particularly interesting for Bari: in spring 2026, the ATP noted that Moller had already won four Challenger titles, all on clay. Three of them had come in the 2025 season alone.
So he is not simply the highest-ranked player on the list. He is a player who has already shown that he can put together a title-winning week on clay and who has come close to breaking into the Top 100. At a Challenger 50, that is enough to attract attention without adding any labels.
Daniel Elahi Galan: No. 335 does not tell the player’s story
Much further down the list is Daniel Elahi Galan, shown on the acceptance list at No. 335. If you stopped there, it would be easy to underestimate him. The Colombian, however, has a career high of No. 56 in the ATP Rankings.
In 2023 he reached the fourth round at Wimbledon. The year before, at the US Open, he defeated Stefanos Tsitsipas, then world No. 5. Those are results far removed from the scale of a Challenger 50 and explain why his name deserves more attention than his current ranking alone would suggest.
Galan also knows the Challenger circuit extremely well and has built an important part of his career on clay. If he finds consistency in Bari, the gap between his acceptance-list ranking and the level he has reached in the past could become one of the most interesting themes of the week.
Vitaliy Sachko, a player who knows Italian Challengers well
Vitaliy Sachko appears second on the acceptance list at No. 188 and has reached a career high of No. 156 in the ATP Rankings.
His first Challenger title came in Bratislava in 2023. But there is also a recent run that makes him familiar to the Italian circuit: in April 2025 he reached back-to-back finals, first in Barletta and then in Monza. Two weeks that say more about his relationship with these tournaments than any generic description could.
Sachko does not arrive with Carballes Baena’s résumé or Mrva’s novelty. He is, however, one of those players who knows how to stay in a Challenger week, match after match. And those are often exactly the profiles that complicate predictions.
Five names, five different reasons to watch them
Putting Carballes Baena, Mrva, Moller, Galan and Sachko on the same list does not mean placing them on the same level. The opposite is true. They are interesting precisely because they arrive in Bari from different directions.
Carballes Baena has a Top-50 career and two ATP Tour titles behind him. Mrva is only 19 and has just won his first Challenger. Moller has already won repeatedly on clay and has come close to the Top 100. Galan has been world No. 56 and reached the second week of Wimbledon. Sachko knows what it means to build results on the Challenger Tour.
A ranking orders a list. It is not enough to explain a match.
And the Italians?
The Italians deserve a separate discussion, not least because there are already five on the initial acceptance list: Gianluca Cadenasso, Lorenzo Giustino, Stefano Napolitano, Enrico Dalla Valle and Francesco Forti.
We have collected the ranking, career-high ranking and career path of all five in the feature dedicated to the Italians at the Levante Open 2026. The number could also grow through wild cards and qualifying.
Before the tennis starts, one variable remains: the draw
These are players to watch, not predictions. Until the draw is published, we will not know the matchups, potential quarter-finals, halves of the draw or each player’s theoretical path. And before that, the entry list itself can still change.
The updated list of accepted players is collected in the article on the Levante Open 2026 entry list. The Players section contains individual profiles of the players announced for Bari.
When the draw comes out, the numbers will finally have an opponent on the other side of the net. From that point on, the court will matter most.