LP/MB/NS/Indian-Tennis:
Notes for the weeks ending on June 7, 2004
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June 7 Notes
LP and Rikl
had to quickly get on the grasscourts and play, as their R1 match at the
Halle ATP was scheduled for Monday itself .. Payed a pretty good match today
against a tough team in Federer-Allegro and came away with a 67(5) 63 75
win .. There is an exciting onsite fanclub member match report
in the Leander thread of our forum, by our very own Florian from Germany
.. This was an important first match to win -- I hope they will go deep in
the draw at Halle..
Prakash Amritraj (IND,224) went down to Kepler Orellana (VEN,357) 16 67(6)
today at the Forest Hills challenger in New York .. There was also good news,
as Harsh Mankad (IND,328) qualified into the main draw with a 63 26
63 win over Mirko Pehar (USA) .. Harsh is drawn to face Federico Luzzi (ITA,291)
in the first round tomorrow morning .. HM-PA's doubles R1 match was not done
today and is rescheduled for tomorrow afternoon .. Manoj Mahadevan and Dirk
Stegman (USA) are in the final round of qualies tomorrow against Travis Rettenmeier
(USA) and Michael Tebbut (AUS) .. A couple of lucky loser spots got cleared
today in the main draw, and both the teams may be in the main draw already,
I think .. Manoj and Dirk had played a wildcard team of Jonathan Chu (USA)
and Fredick Jonsson (SWE) in the Q1 .. Akshay Vishal Rao and Bradley
Sherwood (USA) was the team that lost to Rettenmeier-Tebbut .. AVR-BS also
may have made the main draw as a lucky loser pair? .. No idea about today's
doubles scores - we will know later for sure.
The four week India satellites have started with the first leg at Indore
.. The next three weeks are all at Delhi and all 4 legs are on hard courts
.. Only three matches in the singles main draw today. Top seed Sunil Kumar
and 3rd seed Vinod Sridhar won, as did the Pakistani wildcard Aqeeb Khan
who is unranked but pulled an upset .. Good job by him, and nice to see a
Pakistani making use of some help from India .. The interesting news was
about P.Srinath playing the qualies and making it in .. He will turn out
to be a big headache for everybody - and it's nice to see him play .. Sri
could never seem to get adjusted to not playing it seems! .. Was a bit surprised
to see that Sunil Kumar was unable to find any of the top players from India
to partner in doubles .. Vijay, Saurav or Srinath would have been great ..
All but one of the doubles R1 matches were done today .. See the
Indore satellite page
for all the scores.
Megha Vakharia (IND,421) and Neha/Shikha Uberoi of USA are in the main draw
of the $25K Allentown challenger this week in Pennsylvania .. Draws not out
yet .. All three are listed for the $10K events in Fort Worth (Texas) and
Edmond (Oklahoma) in the next two weeks in the US.
No news from Kuwait yet about Rohan and Mustafa.
June 6 Notes
LP
is playing this week at the $750K Gerry Weber ATP (grass courts) in Halle,
Germany , with David Rikl .. They are the third seeds but have a tough first
round match against Roger Federer and Yves Allegro of Switzerland ..
MB is not playing this week and Mirnyi is playing with Zimonjic at Queens
.. I was a bit worried about some injury problem with Mahesh .. Nothing like
that; he has gone to India, as he will be carrying the Olympic torch this
week (he said it was a "once in a lifetime chance" he didn't want to miss
- of course!) ..
Prakash Amritraj is drawn to face #364 Kepler Orellana (VEN) at the
Forest Hills grasscourts challenger in New York .. Harsh Mankad is in the
final round of qualies there with a 60 61 shellacking of Sanjin Sadovic (CAN,700)
today .. Sadovich had beaten Manoj Mahadevan in the Qualies first round,
62 16 76(5) yesterday, as Mankad had a bye .. Sadovich had actually beaten
Harsh last year in a three-setter at the Granby challenger qualies last yea,
and seemed to be alright on grass, considering he beat Manoj who is a good
grasscourt player - so perhaps Harsh can do well this week at Firest Hills
along with Prakash who should love the grasdcourts there .. By the way, these
are the same courts where they used to play the US Open 25 years back (has
it been that long? -- even I remember the last year of play there) .. Interestingly,
they still have the strict "all-white" dress code there, even for the challenger
qualifying matches, as they indicated in strong words in the fact sheet!
.. I believe it is after a long time that they are conductinga couple
of pro events there .. They also did a claycourt challenger a few weeks back
.. In another Q1 match, ArunPrakash Rajagopalan went down to Diego Ayala
(USA,861), 16 57 .. Harsh plays Mirko Pehar (USA,784) tomorrow in the final
qualies .. IN the doubles main draw, Harsh and Prakash are playing
together and are seeded 3rd .. They play a wildcard pair, Michael Kosta and
Hamid Miorzadeh .. PA's singles R1 is on Monday
At the $15K Kuwait F1 futures Rohan Bopanna went down a couple of days
back in the semis against the top seed Filip Prpic (SWE,299), 57 06, after
a QF win against Mohammed Al Ghareeb (KUW,902) 26 61 62 and a second round
walkover .. In the second round, Mustafa Ghouse wenty down to Jakub
Hasek (CZE,744) 46 16 .. Mustafa and Rohan won the doubles title there, however,
beating Gilles Kremer (LUX)/ Peter Mayer-Tischer (GER) in the SF and 4th
seeds Sebastian Fritz (GER)/ Frank Moser (GER), 46 64 63 .. Mustafa keeps
on winning in doubles with great consistency.
I was wondering yesterday about why Vishal Punna was not in the Indian satellites
- and then I found out today that he had played the first round of qualies
at the Queen's ATP in Londoin yesterday! .. 850th ranked Vihsal went down
to James Auckland (GBR,433), 26 36 .. While I am generally reluctant to criticize
the players' tour planning as I don't know the particulars of their situations,
I just cannot understand how so many players skipped these satellites ..
On the other hand, AITA perhaps shouldn't have set up the dates of these
satellites smack at the right time when there are grasscourt events in Europe/USA
where our players feel confident of at least trying their luck for a big
break .. I think AITA probably wanted to conudct the satellites before the
last year's satellite points fall off from the indian players' point totals,
though .. In any event, it is just doesn't seem prudent for the players to
not pick up the cheaper points from an easier field in the satellites - why
not try your luck at bigger events after getting some good points in the
kitty and a higher rank? .. Not trying to single out Vishal, as there are
a few others who have done this, now and in the past.
June 5 Notes
Sorry
for a little delay in updating yesterday's news .. The fantastic run at the
French Open junior doubles came to an end for Tushar Liberhan and Divij Sharan
who wentd own in the semifinals to the 7th seeds Alex Kuznetsov (USA) and
Mihail Zverev (GER), 67(5) 46 .. Oyr guys were down a break in the first
set and made a late charge but dropped a close tiebreaker .. They just could
not get over the hump in the second set, but the fought hard .. Still a terrific
week of work by the pair - always impressive to play one of the last 6 matches
among 94 matches in the junior boys' section! ..
In another bad news item from yesterday, top seeded LP and David Rikl were
surprisingly upset in the semi of the $125K+H Prostejobv challenger in the
Czech Republic, 62 61 by the 3rd seed Dominik Hrbaty (SVK) and Jaroslav Levinsky
(CZE) .. So, not much accomplished there, but I would be happy if they got
out of there wiothout any injuries or anything.
Still have not got any news from Kuwait on how Rohan and Mustafa have done
since the second round earlier this week .. Last year ITF had stopped their
folks from sending draw sheets and updates to SteveG, the one man who has
done such a fantastic job for such a long time in promptly updating scores
- the rationale was that they would do it themselves at their website ..
Yeah right, like they are capable of it! .. We were skeptical and after several
months convinced that we were right. The ITF guys basically update
scores from Monday through thrusday and go home after that leaving all of
us in the dark in the later rounds .. The ITYF officials are not allowed
to send news to SteveG - like it is such a crime for tennis fans to know
such privileged information like scores! .. When will these tennis mandarins
learn hopw to make the damn game popular? .. Anyway, our problem has
also been that the Kuwait newspapers do not seem to have any idea about such
an event going on out there..
Today's news .. Prakash Amritraj will be in the main draw at the $50K Forest
Hills grass challenger next week in New York .. Harsh Mankad missed the draw
by one spot ayesterday and has entered the qualifying draw as the top seed
.. He was a little worried earlier in the week about whether his ankle was
fully 100% (he was feeling pain by the end of the Fergana challenger) ..
Had got it checked out and there seemed to be nothing serious .. Anyway,
he got one more day of rest, with a Q1 bye .. Tomorrow he will play the winner
of today's match between Manoj Mahadevan and Sanjin Sadovich (CAN) .. Also
in the qualifying draw is Arun Prakash Rajagopalan, the Asian junior champion
from last year who has been training in the US and has not played much this
year so far .. Arun Prakash plays Diego Ayala (USA) in the Q1 ..
I am rather disappointed at how many Indian players are skipping the 4 week
satellites starting next week in India .. Sunil Kumar Sipaeya is the top
entry .. Vinod Sridhar, Vijay Kannan, Vishal Uppal, Ajay Ramswasmi, Rohan
Gajjar and Jaco Mathew are the ones in the main draw .. The number of good
players missing is astounding .. PA, HM and RB are the only ones who really
should have skipped this .. Even Mustafa I can understand, because he has
done the satellites so many times and with his doubles ranks having gone
way up, he is trying to get that big break in the futures circuit and challengers
.. Somdev, I believe, got all his plans messed up with postponed board exams
which fall in the second week of the satellites or something like that ..
Vishal Punna has been totally missing in action since that great start at
the beginning of the year .. Then ArunPrakash, Manoj Mahadevan, etc etc ..
On top of that ITF seems to have changed the classification now to $25K+H
(all four weeks are in Delhi and AITA will give hospitality), so the winner
now stands to gain 46 pts - so all thoise who skipped it will regret having
done that .. VERY unfair for ITF to allow that AFTER the entries were closed
- according to ITF, they changed it on June 2nd this week, a full 10 days
after the entries closed .. They should start getting a clue or two -- it
is just wrong to fix a player field and then change the point table .. Anyway,
a great great opportunity for Sunil Kumar to clean up (unless Vijay, Vinod,
Ajay give serious resistance) and pick up some 40-- odd points and get his
ranking to skyrocket into the top-300 ..
At the Delhi $10K ITF women's event, Rushmi Chakravarthi once again
got Ankita in the final, 64 64 today .. Terrific run by Rushmi to pick
up 14 points in two weeks of work with 2 singles titles .. Also one doubles
title and another final .. Rushmi is in irrepressible form right now, it
seems .. Sanaa Bhambri and Liza Pereira pulled the big upset in the doubles
final over Rushmi and Ankita in a 3rd set tiebreaker win .. Those two had
also beaten the second seeds Sai-Archana earlier .. Fine run by young Sanaa
- she got a bit of revenge on the elder sister too.
June 4 Notes
The
French Open doubles final is between Llodra-Santoro and Malisse-O.Rochus ..
Llodra-Santoro upset the Bryans in three sets .. The Bryans had a 10 match
win streak going at the FO where they had won 20 of 21 sets going back to
last year .. More significantly, now we seem to have to worry about yet another
top-notch doubles pair at the Olympics, if this Belgian pairing of Malisse
and Rochus keep this up and play at Athens.
Divij and Tushar play a big semifinal today at the FO against the 7th seeds
Alex Kuznetsov (USA) and Mihail Zverev (GER) .. Zverev is the one who beat
Tushar in the singles QF before losing yesterday in the SF to his doubles
partner Kuznetsov, who has now reached the singles final today after upsetting
the 5th seed Brendan Evans .. Tushar and Divij play the final match on court
1 where the two boys' singles and doubles semis are scheduled.
Leander and Rikl seemed to be matching MB-MM's score yesterday at the Prostejov
challenger QF as they too dropped a 67(1) first set .. They came back to
win 67(1) 62 62 though, over the Czech wildcard pair, Jan Masic and Ivo Minar
.. Today they play the SF against the 3rd seeds Dominik Hrbaty (SVK) and
Jaroslav Levinsky (CZE) ..
Bad day for Prakash Amritraj (IND,231) yesterday at the $50K Tallahassee
Challenger, as he went down to Rajeev Ram (USA,351) in a roller-coaster match,
16 63 16 .. Later in the evening PA and Frederico Luzzi could not do much
in the doubles R1 either, losing
36 26 to the tough second seeds, Huntley Montgomery and Brian Vahaly.
At the Kuwait $15K futures, Rohan Bopanna and Mustafa Ghouse have reached
the doubles semis .. The top seeds beat Abdullah Magdas (KUW) and Ahmed Rabeea
(KUW) 76(3) 62 and then Trent ASaron (USA) and David Brady (AUS) also by
the same score, 76(3) 62 .. The SF is against Gilles Kremer (LUX) and Peter
Mayer-Tischer (GER) .. No updates on their singles R2 yet though.
At the Delhi $10K ITF women's circuit event, Karishma Patel's nice run ended
against the second seed Ankita Bhambri, 06 26 .. Top seed Rushmi's unbeaten
streak also continued as is demolished Liza Pereira 61 60 .. Ouch is the
word for today's semifinals .. No big surprise, because Rushmi and Ankita
are clearly playing at a dfifferent level than everybody else out there ..
The doubles final is this evening between Rushmi-Ankita and Liza-Sanaa ..
See the the Delhi $10K page.
June 3 Note-3
Things didn't go right for MB-MM today at the FO, it seems .. [SF] (3) M.Bhupathi/
M.Mirnyi l. Xavier Malisse (BEL)/ Olivier Rochus (BEL), 67(1) 64 26 .. MB-MM
were quickly up a break in the second game of the first set and led 2-0,
but then MB dropped serve in the 7th game .. Soon it was 4-4 .. Our guys
had two break points at 6-5 to go ahead, but they didn't convert there ..
The Belgians stepped it up a notch and won 10 of the next 11 points, and
the set was over with a very poor tiebreaker for MadMax .. In the second
set, they forced a timely break in the 9th game and served out the set ..
In the 3rd set, after 2-2, it all went downhill as MM and MB dropped serves
in succession and it was over.
June 3 Note-2
Great work by Tushar Liberhan and Divij Sharan .. They reached the junior doubles semifinal at the French Open
with a 64 62 shellcaking of Phillip Simmonds (USA) and Fritz Wolmarens (RSA)
.. This match was competitive for, oh for a few minutes .. Our guys
were ahead a break and were broken back even at 4-4 in the first set .. That
was the end of the resistance as the guys went on a rampage and won 8 of
the next 10 games to finish off the American-SouthAfrican pair .. The semifinal
opponents for our boys will be determined later today .. Go Tushar! Go Divij
!
June 3 Note-1
Mahesh's doubles semifinal
starts at about 3 pm at the French Open, after an MxD semi that starts soon
at 1.30 pm (a Legends match ahead of the doubles semi is not listed as a
walkover) .. But first, the boy's doubles QF between Tushar-Divij and
Simmonds-Wolmarens starts at 2 pm (5.30 pm India, 8 am New York) .. Come to our
new flash chatroom
during the matches for score updates and to cheer our guys on ..
Prakash Amritraj continues his nice form - he easilyt beat the qualifier,
Huntley Montgomery (USA,497) at the Tallahassee (Florida) $50K challenger,
75 63 yesterday .. In the R2 today, Prakash faces his good firend, Rajeev
Ram (USA,351), who upset the 3rd seed Noam Okun (ISR,165) yesterday .. Good
to see two indian names facing each other in Florida .. In doubles, Prakash
and Frederico Luzzi (ITA) had their doubles R1 postponed to today .. They
play Montgomery-Vahaly this evening.
Top seeds Leander and David Rikl advanced with an easy 63 64 win over
Jan Hajek and David Skoch at the $125K+H Prostejov challenger last night
.. They play another wildcard Czech team, Jan Masic and Ivo Minar today.
At the $15K Kuwait F1 futures, Rohan and Mustafa have both reached the second round ..
The 4th seed Rohan Bopanna beat Karim Alyali (Lebanon,1415), 62 63 and 7th seed Mustafa Ghouse
beat Jhonathan medina-Alvarez (VEN,713) 62 26 62 .. Rohan plays unranked
Mohammed Abdelaziz Al Nuaimi (UAE) and Mustafa plays Jakub Hasek (CZE,744)
next .. I haven't seen the doubles draw yet.
It was another big day for comeback lady, Karishma Patel, today at
the $10K Delhi women's ITF .. She upset the 3rd seed Sonal Phadke in three
sets .. 23 year old Karishma, who had bneen off the tour for over 2.5 years
since 2001 October, is making a comeback at these two Indian events .. Nice
to see the qualifier reach her second $10K semifinal (she had one in 2001
in India as well) .. She will run into the 2nd seed Ankita Bhambri in the
semi tomorrow .. Ankita once again beat younger sister Sanaa, who had a good
start winning the first set in a tiebreaker .. Rushmi keeps cruising and
Liza has also reached semi, showing some decent consistency these two weeks
- it will not be easy for her to tackle Rushmi who seems to be in "roaring"
form, so to say .. See the
Delhi $10K page.
June 2 Note-2
Nice
work by Tushar and Divij at the French Open .. They once agains upset the
highly ranked Korean team whom they had beaten ins traight sets in Belgium
last week .. [R2] T.Liberhan/ D.Sharan d. (2) Woon-Sun Jun (KOR)/ Sun-Yong
Kim (KOR), 63 76(5) .. Our boys were up quickly with two breaks to 3-0, then
traded breaks and won the set at 6-3 .. In the second, they were behind
0-2, came back to even it at 4-4 and took it from there .. In the QF, they
play the same team that beat Karan-Yi today, Simmonds-Wolmarens.
Very interesting French Open so far .. The Williams sisters get unceremoniously
dumped back-to-back, and then we get three Argentinians and one unlikely
Briton in the men's semifinal .. How the heck is Tim Moorgiwallah doing what
he is doing? .. Every now and then we hear obituaries that the guy is nearly
washed up, and usually that is after after the British hype machine goes
into overdrive before Wimbledon and comes crashing down after yet another
listless late round loss by TH .. But Mr.Moorgiwallah keeps on trucking and
he has been staying up there in the rankings seemingly for ever .. Sure,
he does lay his eggs not too infrequently, but one has to respect his abilities
when he does well on both grass and clay, not to mention his
determination in showing that he is not going away just yet ...
June 2 Note-2
Terrible day so far .. Karan Rastogi and Chu-Huan Yi let one slip through
their hands today in the second round of boys' doubles at the FO .. 76(2) 67(6) 57 loss to
Phillip Simmonds (USA) and Fritz Wolmarens (RSA) .. They had multiple match points
while up two minibreaks at 6-3 in the second set tiebreaker, but proceeded
to lose 5 straight points and drop the set .. In the 3rd set Karan dropped
serve in the 3rd game and the 11th game .. They had evened it in the 6th
game at 3-3 .. Karan served at 30-0 at 5-5 but our guys dropped four points
in a row and 8 of the last 9 points to lose the match .. Well, what can I say, it
has not been a great day.
Some good n ews too - Divij and Tushar just got a walkover in the R1 doubles
match postponed at 36 61 00 yesterday from Troicki and Visak .. They have
just started their second round against the 2nd seeds Woon-Suk Jun and Sun-Yong
Kim of Korea.
At the Delhi $10K, seven Indians made it to the QF .. The big upset was by
young Sandhya Nagaraj who beat Sai Jayalakshmy in a 3rd set tiebreaker ..
Karishma Patel's good run continued as she got a 3rd set retirement from
the Japanese opponent .. Ankita beat Sheetal easily .. Rushmi, Liza, Sonal,
and Sanaa are also in the QFs .. See the
Delhi $10K page.
June 2 Note-1
Mahesh has the day off, as the doubles semifinals are tomorrow at the FO ..
Bad news from Tushar Liberhan in the final-16 of the boy's singles at the FO, as he went down
to a very talented Mihail Zverev (GER,6), 36 36 .. He played very well in
patches and broke the German many times, but a very poor first serve percentage,
especially in the second set did him in .. Here is the match report, based
on the online real-time stats and updates -
Tushar started with a few unforced errors in the first three games and dropped
serve twice to fall 0-3. He got it back together very quickly and broke
Zverev twice, converting his first two break chances in games 4 and 6 to
even it at 3-3. However he lost a couple of points at the net in the
next game and two more unforced errors caused him to be broken in the 7th
game - 3-4 .. The errors continued as he dropped serve once more to lose
the set at 3-6 .. He made 5 errors in the first six games and then 8 in the
last three games, playing well only in the middle three games. It appeared
that Zverev was able to counter his net approaches in the last three games
when TL lost 4 points at the net ..
In the second set, Tushar started well, breaking Zverev in the first game
itself .. Suddenly TL's first sreve deserted him, as he got only one of four
in the next game .. He got broken back thanks to a double fault .. Once again
Tushar got two break points in the next game and went ahead 2-1 .. At this
point Zverev was 5 of 5 in break chances and Tushar 4 of 6. Rare to
see that kind of efficiency from players in converting BPs! TL's first
serve problems continued, as he hit only one good one in the next game as
well, allowing Zverev again to convert a 30-40 break chance to go to a perfect
6/6 on that .. Again it was even at 2-2 .. His first serve continued to misbehave
in the 6th game as he hit only 2 of 6 serves (Only 3 good serves out of 14
at that point in the set; he was again winning a few points at the net and
that was all that was keeping him in the game) ... He had two more double
faults and faced a few decues .. Tushar somehow saved three break attampts
with some points at the net, but dropped serve in the end .. 2-4 .. Now I
think he must have got demoralized, as Zverev held easily for the first time
in the match .. 2-5 .. One more double fault and only 3 of 8 good first serves
in the next game, but he held serve after saving one BP .. 3-5 .. He lost
the match at 36 36 ..
In the final analysis, despite the scoreline, I think Tushar showed in patches
that he was very much able to handle a very talented top player in Zverev
.. The reason for his loss was essentially the first serve problems and unforced
errors (as usual, some of it must have been forced) .. The match took an
hour an 7 minutes .. 16 winners and 24 errors by Zverev; 14 winners and 38
errors (6 double faults) by Tushar .. 7 of 11 in break chances by MZ, 4 of
6 by TL .. The mistakes did him in this time, it appears .. Still a very
nice run making it to the 3rd round of a grand slam, the first time an Indian
has done that on clay at the French Open in at least a decade.
June 1 Notes
The semifinalists are all set in doubles at the French Open .. 3rd seeds
Mahesh and Max face Xavier Malisse and Olivier Rochus of Belgium who upset
the 9th seeds Etlis and Rodriguez of ARG in straight sets .. The Belgians
look like yet another Olympics combination that is looking good .. The other
SF is between the top seeds Bryan twins against the 6th seeds Santoro-Llodra
.. The potential French Olympics pair, Santoro-Llodra upset the 4th seeds
Knowles-Nestor .. The Bryans won a classic over the Zimbabwe Olympics pair,
Wayne Black and Kevin Ullyett, 67(8) 76(3) 75 .. Black and Ullyett, who have
woin grand slam title in the past but had not looked all that great last
year, have been playing very well
lately - they have won two masters events (Miami and Hamburg) and have reached
the QF of both the Australian Open of French Open so far this year .. Unless
somebody can prevail upon the ITF seeding committee with some arguments that
the Indian Express pair was so good once upon a time, the Zimbabwe pair who
will both crack top-10 next week, may have already ousted our pair from consideration
for a top 4 seed at the Olympics .. It looks like the Bryans and Santoro-Llodra
are a lock for that, and now the ZIM pair also have positioned themselves
rather firmly .. Arthurs and Hanley haven't done much lately for AUS .. Perhaps
our pair can oust Woodbridge-Arthurs form top-4 consideration? - not much
chance unless Woodbridge is not playing Olympics .. We are not in great shape,
as far as LP's rank is concerned .. He has just lost 375 more points from
his total (last year's SF at the FO) and his rank will drop below 25 now
with 1600 points .. He still has 120 more pts from Den Bosch, 450 from Wimbledon,
and 175 from Gstaad to defend in the next 4 weeks - so his ranking could
really drop a bit unless he does well at Wimbledon.
So, I was hoping that Lee and David could get on to the grass courts
early and be ready to do some damage in the three grass events including
Wimbledon .. Obviously it was quite puzzling to find today that Leander and
David Rikl decided to play this week (now that he is done with FO) at, of
all places, a clay challenger! .. They took a wildcard and are seeded first
at the $125K+H challenger at Prostejov, CZE. Why waste time on clay
and risk injury or something for hardly much money or points (90 pts and
$3500 for even a title)? .. I don't know - well, Lee knows what he is doing,
I hope .. Anyway, this is nothing new for us fans though - when have
we ever been able to figure him out? .. All we can do is to just cheer him
on! :-) .. They play a wildcard pair, Jan Hakjeck and David Skoch in the
first round on wednesday.
Prakash Amritraj (IND,231) plays qualifier Huntley Montgomery (USA,497) tomorrow
at the $50K Tallahassee challenger in Florida .. In doubles, he is playing
with Frederico Luzzi and they run into the second seeds Montgomery and Brian
Vahaly of USA .. The doubles R1 is also tomorrow evening ...
Rohan Bopanna and Mustafa Ghouse are at the $15K Kuwait futures .. No draw
info yet .. Late update on a score from last week .. Mustafa and Aisam Qureshi
went down 46 46 in the final at the $15K+H in Soudi Arabia last week against
Senastien Fitz (GER) and Karim Mamoun (EGY).
At the $10K women's event in Delhi, the first round of singles and doubles
got completed by today .. Lata Assudani had a good upset of the 5th seed
Susanne Aigner yesterday, ASrchana Venkatraman was upset today and Karishma
Patel pulled off a big win over Iciri Rai .. All the other big names, Rushmi,
Ankita, Sai, Liza and Sanaa have all advanced .. In doubles there was one
surprise, as Sanaa and Liza upset the second seeds, the experienced Sai and
Archana .. Sanaa, by the way, did things the right way, playing a couple
of qualifying rounds for practice, rather than take a wildcard to the main
draw - I always have big respect for those who choose to play qualies when
they don't have to (I assume Sanaa would have been given a WC if she wanted)!
.. Sanaa gets Lata tomorrow in the PQF. All the results are at the Delhi $10K page.
Some more good news from French Open in the juniors .. Karan and Chu-Huan
Yi staged a nice comeback to advance to the final-16, beating Lukas Lacko
(SVK) and David Navarrette (VEN), 67 64 61 .. Tushar and Divij were tied
at one set apiece at 16 63 00 against Viktor Troicki (SCG) and Vilim Visak
(CRO) when bad light caused a postponement to tomorrow .. Looks like Tushar
may ened up playing three matches tomorrow .. First his singles match, then
after some rest the unfinished doubles R1 set .. If he wins he may play a
doubles R2 match as well .. Karan and Yi play Phillip Simmonds (USA)/ Fitz
Wolmarens (RSA) also tomorrow.
May 31 Note-2
Good news! -- Mahesh and Max advanced to the semifinal at the French Open, hardly sweating in a QF match ..
[QF] (3) M.Bhupathi/ M.Mirnyi d. Karsten Braasch (GER)/ Sargis Sargsian, 63 64 .. No drama in this match,
and I don't have much details as I was following a more ineteresting match, where Tushar Liberhan pulled
a big upset of the 10 seeded world #9 Woong-Sun Jun, 46 62 63 to reach the final-16 in the boys' section!!! .. LP's MxD match yet to start.
Here is the report on Tushar's match - Tushar took a while to get
a measure of Jun's game .. He was down a break by the 4th game .. He
was further down after another break at 2-5, but then it all changed .. He
mounted a late charge, breaking the 10th seed in the 8th game .. He
saved a set point to take Jun to a decue in the 10th game as well but lost
the set there.
In the second set, TL had break points in the second game itself which the
Korean boy saved. IN the 6th game he converted his 4th BP of the set
to go ahead to 4-2 .. He seemed to be playing solid tennis without too many
errors, compared to Jun who was hitting one winner followed by an enforced
error all through. Then Tushar jumped all over Jun in the 8th game to win
the final 3 points and take the set at 6-2.
As Jun continued to add more to his unforced errors tally with 5 more in
the first two games of the 3rd set, Tushar converted another 15-40 BP to
go ahead 2-0 .. Under some pressure from Jun and facing a bit of trouble
in the next game at 0-30, Tushar served his second ace and hit another winner
to hold serve and go to 3-0 .. Now it was just a question of playing steady
and waiting for Jun to continue to make mistakes .. The Korean boy obliged, adding
three more errors in the 4th game and handing the game to Tushar .. 4-0
.. At 5-1 and serving for the match, it got a bot tioght though .. Tushar started with a double fault
and fell to 0-30 .. But then he made an uncharacteristic trip to the net,
winning the point and getting a match point at 40-30 .. Jun had suddenly
played error free for a couple of games, and he now got a break point with
a winner. He converted that to make it 5-2 .. But he could only play
error-free for about two games .. At 5-3, Tushar got two more errors from
Jun and that was that.
Tushar seems to have played clay tennis simply to perfection .. Went up to
the net just 5 times in the whole match (winning 4 of those points), compared
to 26 times by Jun. Played from the baseline and waited for Jun to make mistakes.
That is the name of the game on clay - patience and steadiness .. 12
winners and 15 errors by Tushar .. Compare that to 31 winners and 52 unforced
errors (a lot of them definitely "forced" by Tushar's steady baseline play,
I am sure). The match took 89 minutes .. Go Tushar!
May 31 Note-1
Karan Rastogi's patchy clay season (actually patchy year ever since the
great start at the Australian Open) continued today, as the 5th ranked 12th
seed was upset by the 78th ranked Martin Fisher of Austria at the French Open juniors in a back and
forth match where Karan wasted a whole bucketfull of opportunities in the
3rd set aftera great comeback in the second set .. Here is a match
report based on the online scoreboard and stats update -
Karan had a double break pt in the first game and converted the first
chance itself to go up 1-0. Helped by an ace, he went up to 2-0 soon
.. After a couple of deuces, Fisher held serve in the 3rd game. Now KR started
having first serve troubles and was facing two break pts at 15-40.
He saved them both, but got broken after a deuce .. 2-2 .. A double fault
caused a BP again in the 5th game. Saved one, but yet another uinforced
error saw his drop serve again .. 2-4 .. Now Martin Fischer seemed to be
getting into full flow as he won 7 of the next 8 points and forced triple
set points at 2-5 on Karan. Once again Karan saved all of the break
points for deuce, and then saved a 4th set point at AD out too, but then
dropped the set.
In the 3rd game of the second set, Karan went up ahead, with the help of
a couple of winners and a couple of unforced errors from Fischer. With the
DF count mounting from the Austrrian and Karan started hitting more winners,
it was 3-1 and KR again broke him in the 5th game to go ahead 4-1 .. At 5-1,
Karan wasted three chances from triple set point, but converted a fourth
set point to even it up at one set apiece.
He started kept the foot on the pedal to start the 3rd set .. Served his
second ace, to hold serve at love and then had Fischer down at 0-40 again.
A couple of unforced errors from Karan helped Fischer to save the BPs and
hold serve though. Now it was a key juncture again for Karan and he had to
keep his mind in the game .. But alas, just like that he was down 0-40 on
serve and was suddenly in trouble at 1-2 .. He lost Eight points straight
three of them in a row at the net, based on the stats. Karan really needs
to do something about his tendency to lose points in a bundle at times -
he does snap out of it but against better player it is suicidal. Anyhway,
as expected, he quickly had Fischer down at 0-40 again and he got the break
right back to 2-2 .. That did not last much longer either, as KR dropped
serve yet again after saving a couple of BPs (one with an ace) .. 2-3 though
.. Then, for the second time in the set, Karan wasted triple break chances
on Martin. He held serve to go 4-2 as Karan went 1 of 7 in break chances
in the set. Then at 3-4, Karan had yet another break chance at 30-40
and that too went unused. Losing 7 chances in a row is a killer.
Martin held serve to ghho up 5-3. Now KR started with a double fault,
having invited all the pressure on himself. He faced a match point
at 30-40 but an unforced error from the Austrian boy gave him a reprieve.
Another UE from Karan saw him face a second match pt but he again saved it
with a point at the net. On a 3rd match point, Martin hit a winner
and Karan was upset.
The match took 94 minutes .. 3 aces and 4 DFs by Karan .. no aces and 4 DFs
by MF .. 6/17 in break points by MF and 5 of 16 by Karan (1 of 8 in the 3rd,
which was really the key stat of the match that caused the loss) .. This
was an extremely rare case of the loser having more points in a match - KR
woin 79 to 78 by Martin.
Tushar is right now playing the 10th seed Woong-Sun Jun .. Mahesh's doubles QF has also started.
.. Previous notes are at
Notes for
the week ending on May 31 ..
I am getting some inquiries from US college coaches who are interested
in Indian junior players .. I would like to be able to contact Indian
players (some of the coaches are inquiring about specific names) .. If
any of the junior players are reading this, please contact me .. Or if
any of the other readers know the contact emails/address for any junior
player, let me know .. I would like to have a mailing list where I can
post general announcements and inquiries from the coaches too .. Please
email me - R.Jayakrishnan