Early in 1998, he lost to Jarkko Nieminen, and late in the year, he beat Roger Federer, Karol Beck, and Guillermo Coria in successive rounds at Eddie Herr before losing to David Nalbandian in the final.

Early in 1999, he had a great Australian hard court run, beating Nieminen and splitting matches with Kristian Pless in finals two weeks in a row.

Despite recording his first (and only) tour level match win against Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo at Casablanca in 2003, his ranking faded again to the 300's in 2003 and 2004 before improving to the 230's again in late 2004 and early 2005, but an injury in February kept him out for 7 months.

But he then went on a tear on the Futures circuit, winning 4 of 7 titles and finishing as the runner-up in the other three while touring Scotland, Algeria, Poland, Belarus, and France, compiling a 32–3 match record during that stretch, to improve his ranking to #290 by mid-July.

In August, he made two straight Challenger finals in Italy and Germany to break into the top-200 for the first time and reach #165, beating #250 Davide Sanguinetti, #117 Boris Pašanski, and #136 Bohdan Ulihrach while losing to #116 Jiří Vaněk and #289 Ivo Minář.

But he regained his form again, reaching two Challenger finals and a semifinal in April and May, beating #127 Iván Navarro Pastor while losing to #107 Eduardo Schwank, #130 Alberto Martín, #199 Younes El Aynaoui on the comeback trail, and #119 Daniel Gimeno-Traver again.