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LP/MB/NS/Indian-Tennis: Notes for the 2 weeks ending on Apr 19, 2004
(Previous week's notes) (Next week's notes) (Daily Notes Index 1997 thru 2003)

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Apr 19 Note-1

Last week turned out to be pretty eventless as expected and so it was a good time for a break for me .. Back at work this week :-)

Mahesh and Max are top seeded at the Monte Carlo masters as the clay season starts now .. They ahve a first round bye .. Strangely, LP is not playing this week .. I don't know why .. He has a lot of points dropping off over the next few weeks and needs to keep a decent ranking for a seeding at Olympics - I am surprised he is missing a Masters event with a lot of points ..

The Fed Cup Asia-Oceana Group-I is underway from today at Delhi .. When will ITF learn to use the word "Tier" rather than "Group" to make it easier for people who are not long-term tennis fans to understand how Fed Cup and Davis Cup works? .. Just one of my old pet peeves .. Anyway, in this "Group-1" competition there are two "groups", which should be called "pools" as they would be called in normal sports parlance, but the folks in London are again weird as usual :-) .. I will use the term "pool" all this week.  Pool-A has #1 seed Thailand, #4 China, Philippines and NewZealand .. Pool-B has #2 Indonesia, #3 Korea, Uzbekistan, India and Taipei .. The teams will play each other during four days of round robin in the pools and the top two teams from each pool will advance to the semifinals .. The two winners of the semifinals qualify for the "World group qualifiers" just like in Davis Cup, where they play teams from other regions in the world to qualify for the Fed Cup World Group  in 2005 .. The Indian team is Sania Mirza, Rushmi Chakravarthi, Ankita Bhambri and Manisha Malhotra .. As Isha and Megha are injured and ITF did not approve a quick change of nation for Shikha Uberoi (USA), we picked Manisha in the last minute, based on her experience and abilities as a doubles player as well .. That was a smart move .. But our chances for advancement to the semifinals will depend on our ladies pulling some upsets, because most of these teams have pretty good players ranked well above our players .. See an excellent preview in The Hindu by Kamesh Srinivasan with all the details of the teams .. The bottom two teams out of the 9 will get relegated to the second tier (group II) in Asia-Oceania .. Last year we were in the Group-II in Asia, having fallen there after a depleted team did poorly in the group-I in 2002 .. We did well to come back to group-I and barring serious problems, we should be at least staying in group-I after this week .. If everything works (hey, there is homefield advantage also), could we do the unthinkable and move up from group-I to the playoffs? ..  Last year, Indonesia and Japan advanced from Group-I to the WG playoffs, where Japan managed to move to the world group this year, which is why they are not at Delhi .. Indonesia lost the WG playoff and are back in Group-I ..

Mankad, Bopanna and Ghouse are all at the $15K Qatar F1 futures .. Mustafa had to win two qualifying matches to make it in .. Here are the matchups -- [R1] (4) Harsh Mankad (IND,329) vs (Q) Julien Maes (FRA,1094) .. [R1] Rohan Bopanna (IND,427) vs (7) Jonathan Marray (GBR,382) .. [R1] (Q) Mustafa Ghouse (IND,707) vs (8) Ti Chen (TPE,393) .. My good friend in Doha has been sending us some updates every day .. Take a look at the forum thread on Qatar F1.

Last week's news -- As we reported in the forum pages, Sunil Kumar was at the Uzbekistan $15K and won a round before falling to a seed .. Ajay Ramaswami qualified in but went down in the first round

Apr 13 Notes

A news update:  There was a story hitting the press today that AITA is letting Shikha Ubeori to play for India .. Here is the rediff news item .. One correction in the news - Shikha is not 18 .. She turned 21 last week .. The more the merrier, I say .. Come on over Shikha! .. I am not sure if her record would place her above other Indians like Sania, Rushmi, Isha, Ankita, etc .. Shikha did not play much juniors and hit the pro circuit early and has played pretty regularly for a long while though with relatively limited success .. Has one $10K title and no other finals in her pro career over the last 4 years or so (she also spent one year in college at Princeton, and was ranked #79 in college rankings in 2000) .. She has played quite a bit better in the last few months than earlier on, though .. She is a telented player and perhaps still has potential to do more in the future than she has shown in the past .. Apparently AITA is trying to get her to play next week at the Fed Cup .. That is way too fast, if you ask me .. I don't like things going that fast, though I think we could really use her help next week, with Isha and Rushmi all injured ..

Sorry for being very slow in updates .. Actually I may not have any updates at all this week .. For two reasons -- one, I have a very busy week .. Two, none of our players, men, women or juniors are playing anywhere .. Rushmi in the Hoc Chi Minh City challenger was the only one expected to play this week, and she withdrew from there Friday after she was troubled by some sort of an injury (not serious I think) at the Delhi challenger .. Sunitha Rao (USA) is at the Jackson challenger, and I will update if anything significant happens there .. Neha Uberoi (USA) had lost in the qualies for the WTA family Circles Cup Q1 to the 13th seed Catalina Castanio (ITA,126) 36 26 over the weekend and Shikha is injured with back spasms last week .. LP and MB will be at the Monte Carlo Masters next week, Mankad and Bopanna play at the Qatar F1 $15K; Sania and company will be at the Fed Cup regionals in Delhi next week, etc .. But this week is probably the lightest week I remember in a while .. So it's a good time for me to take a break .. See you next week, unless any big story breaks this week!

Apr 11 Notes

Here is the match report on the Prakash match from "gvhvhg" in our chatroom (who refuses to give his real name, and so we call him "gurvinder singh harvinder
singh harbhajan singh gill" :-)) .. Thanks! ..
First set:  PA hold 1-0 .. TS hold 1-1(2 aces, love game) .. PA 2-1 (8-8 pts) ..PA breaks 3-1 (15-game) .. PA broken 3-2 (long game, 8 deuces, 5 break points saved prior) 47% 1st serve (3 DF's so far) .. TS holds 3-3 (suzuki 60 % 1st serve) .. PA broken (15-game) 3-4 .. TS holds 3-5 .. PA holds 4-5 (phew...saved a set pt) .. TS holds 4-6 (love game) .. First set 4-6(50 mins) .... Set-2 .... PA holds 1-0 .. TS holds 1-1(game-15) .. PA broken 1-2(love game) (suzuki with a 29-8 receiving pts won edge - *thx shyam) .. TS holds 1-3 (ended game on ace, leads pts 15-5) .. PA holds 2-3 ..  TS holds 2-4 (TS lost one pt on serve this set) .. PA holds 3-4(double fault at 40-15, went to deuce) .. TS holds 3-5 (had 30-30) .. PA  broken 3-6 (double fault at 15-15) .. Second set 3-6(35 mins) ...... Set-3 ...... TS holds 0-1 (was 0-30, 2 aces to end game) .. PA holds 1-1 (40-15; 3 deuces, 1 br. pt saved) .. TS holds 1-2 (game-15) .. PA broken 1-3 (incredibly long game..had to giv comp to my sis...ppl in chat having irrelevant discussion .... missed deuce count ...lol) .. TS holds 1-4 (quick hold) .. PA holds 2-4 (nice comeback, was down 0-40, 5 pts in a row) .. TS holds 2-5 (TS lost 4 pts on serve all set, 7 in last two sets) .. PA broken (was up 40-30, 3 deuces, 2 double faults, 1 ace, and a hell alotta second serves) ... Third set 2-6 (50 mins) .... Suzuki d. Amritraj 6-4 6-3 6-2
All of us were so down after LP's match, we just split  .. No report on that match .. Basically LP broke wonce and got broken twice in every match, and Motomura did not allow him to ever go into any sort of streaks, though Leander was throwing his everything into it and fighting till the very end .. Motomura played one of the best matches he has ever played to finally take the monkey off the Japanese backs - they had lost 17 Davis Cup ties in a row to us ..

By the way, Prajwal Hegde of the Deccan Herald is in Japan .. Both the Hindu and the Indian Express have given some good coverage to the event (I was complainin about newspaper coverage a couple of days back, fearing ut woiuld be as bad as in New Zealand lat time when nobody covered anything) .. I will round up the newspaper articles soon.

Apr 11 Note-1

The unthinkable happened.  Leander went down .. 46 36 67(4) to Motomura .. That happened after Prakash lost 46 36 26 to Suzuki, as Japan finally won a tie against us after God knows how long .. Well one of these days Lee was going to fall short, after having single-handedly done it for years .. LP's match was a very close one though (about 100 pts to 115 pts), despite the scoreline ..  LP's service games were not as solid as usual .. hats off to Motomura who pulled off one of the more memorable wins in Davis Cup in recent times, though it will look as a very ordinary win on paper .. Motomura seemed to play consistently and never seemd to wilt at any point in the match against the charges that LP routinely make at his opponenets in Davis Cup .. He consistently did his job and seemed to not allow LP to get into any of his brilliant streaks .. I just don't have much left right now to type much .. Later folks .. This year's Davis Cup is over for us.

Apr 10 Note-2

The Sunday reverse singles matches start soon in Osaka .. Prakash vs Suzuki followed by Leander vs Motomura .. The first one is at 11 am (7.30 am India, 10 pm SAT New York) .. Again, come to our chatroom at the Forum page for score updates.

Apr 10 Note-1

I expected a bit of a fight from the Japanese in the doubles match, and we did get a bit of it, but there was really no way the Indian Express would allow anything but a win .. LP-MB beat Thomas Shimada and Takehiro Terachi, 61 63 46 75 .. INDIA leads JAPAN 2-1 .. There were a few breaks both ways in the match but the result was a foregone conclusion .. You can see all the details of the match in the Osaka Davis Cup thread in our forum where the fans have posted all details!, as a good group was in the chatroom following it .. Here is the summary that "gvhvhg" sent me (thanks, man!) .. Great!
LP-MB hold 1-0 .. Japan hold 1-1 .. LP-MB hold 2-1 .. 4th game break of serve (15-game) 3-1 .. 5th game LP-MB hold 4-1 (11 mins) at this pt Mahender in the chat room predicts a 17 minute set .. 6th game break of serve ( quick start 0-40...two doubles by japan to start game) 5-1 .. 7th game tough hold ( down 0-40) won 5 pts in a row .. First set 6-1 (20 mins)
 
Jap hold 0-1 .. Jap Break, tough game, several deuces 0-2 .. Jap hold 0-3 (11 mins) .. Ind hold 1-3 (2nd set 8-15 pts) .. Ind break back 2-3 (several deuces, pts--13-18) .. Ind hold 3-3 .. Ind Break 4-3, (21-21 pts) .. Ind hold ( DF on 40-0) 5-3, 49 mins total match time .. Ind break 6-3 ( Several deuces, survived Japanese game points) .. Second Set 6-3 (33 mins)
 
Ind hold, 1-0 .. Jap hold, 1-1 .. Ind hold 2-1,  were down 15-30 .. Ind break 3-1, were down 30-15 .. Ind hold 4-1, 1:10 match time, 16-11 set pts won .. Love Game Japan, 4-2 .. Jap breaks, 4-3 .. Love game Japan, 4-4 ( 18-23 pts) .. Japan breaks, 4-5 (15-game) (19-27 pts) .. Jap hold, 4-6, (game-30) .. Third set 4-6 (33 mins)

Ind hold 1-0  .. Ind break 2-0  .. Ind hold 3-0 (saved br. pts) .. Jap hold 3-1 .. MB broken, 2-3 (bad serving, double faults, second serves galore) .. Jap hold 3-3, love game .. LP quick hold 4-3 (22-20 pts)  .. Jap hold 4-4 .. MB game-15 hold (1 DF) 5-4  .. Jap hold (final pt won off 2nd serve) 5-5  .. LP another love game (he is God) 6-5 (32-29) .. Japan choked, horrible serving, love game INDIA WIN 7-5 .. ... 6-1 6-3 4-6 7-5  (2:09hrs)

Apr 9 Note-2

Alright, it is doubles tomorrow (in a few hours actually), as the greatest current Davis Cup doubles team take on the Japanese .. We will have a chat session during the match with point-by-point score updates .. The match starts at 2 pm Osaka Time (10.30 am India .. 1 am New York) .. Come to the chatroom at the Forum page (links at the top bar) - I myself may miss it today, but there will be folks doing score updates (score update online page URL is also posted at the forum under the Davis Cup thread in the tennis tournament forum)

Here is a picture that was kindly sent to me by Mr. Ishiyama of the Japan Tennis Association .. Thank you! ... Indian team when "Jana Gana Mana" was being played out there! ..

Indian team at the Davis Cup, osaka, JPN, Apr 2004

Go India! ..

By the way, Prakash hasn't lost the habit of keeping his hand on his heart while listening to the national anthem! ..

Apr 9 Note-2

I don't know what to say about Leander .. What a phenomenon he is! .. Once again he walks in having played just two singles match the last whole year and he does it again to save us .. After Prakash Amritraj went down to their #2 Gouichi Motomura 64 16 26 46,  Leander comes in and takes out their #1, Takao Suzuki,  63 75 36 64 .. India-Japan 1-1.

Simon Chaudury just emailed me that they have actually had great online coverage by ITF's live coverage company who does it for world group ties .. I assume they are testing the point-by-point by point coverage for zonal ties also (which they had never done before) - so there was no links at the Davis Cup web page for any live coverage of this .. Luckily Simon found a hidden link at the JTA website for this - something I couldn't find after hours of looking at every link at their Japanese language website .. Anyway, that is good news and here is a On-the-web Fanclub Member Report:
Lee just levelled the match in a (from what I can tell) dramatic match! Lee def Suzuki: 6-3, 7-5, 3-6, 6-4. I started following the match point by point in the middle of the third set, where Suzuki broke Paes when it was 4-3 and subsequently served out the set. In the fourth set, Lee had to survive some anxious moments - after the first two games went on serve, Lee was easily broken to be done 1-2. After the changeover, Lee was on fire, breaking Suzuki on love and then winning his own serve without losing a point. At 4-3 for Lee, Suzuki had some trouble with the game going to deuces but Lee wasn't able to capitalize and didn't have any break pts. Then at 4-4 my heart skipped a beat... Lee had to fight off three break points (30-40, 2 times Adv Suzuki)! LP finally came through and used his only game point to make it 5-4. It was here that his experience and cleverness showed - Suzuki must also have been ruing his missed chances in the previous game as Lee won three points to be up 40-15 and used his first match point to level the tie.
Thanks, Simon .. You are a life-saver .. The Indian press seems to have given it a total skip, as even the wire services (PTI and UNI) do not seem to have made any arrangements to cover the tie (but they have an excuse .. We have the overhyped series against the big country going on across the border - so we need people there to cover what Irfan's mother is doing) .. What is going on with our newspapers?  Do your work folks, and for God's sake help us out a bit .. Should we fans have to do all the work for the newspapers?

No comments on Leander .. Simply, "We are not Worthy!"  again .. :)

At the Delhi $10K, Ankita Bhambri seems to have played a pretty close match against the top seed Chia-Jung Chuang (TPE,314) in a 67(3) 46 loss .. 4th seed Montinee was upset by Jie Hao of China .. So it will be a Chinese-Taiwanese final this week .. See the Delhi $10K page.

Big win at the Japan Open Juniors grade-1 ITF by 7th seed Divij Sharan (IND,42) who upset the 3rd seed Remco De Rijke (NED,15), 61 60 to reach the semifinal !!! .. That scorelines looks strange, considering the rank of the opponent .. Divij is on a roll this week .. The bad news was again from Karan Rastogi who still has not recaptured his Australian Open form .. he went down 57 36 to the 6th seed Coen van Kuelen (NED,29) .. Hopefully Karan will be back to his form in a few weeks at the French Open juniors. All the scores from our kids in the Japan have been posted at this thread at our forum. 

Apr 9 Note-1

3.30 pm Japan -- Update, I think Prakash lost the match 6-?, 1-6, ?-6, ?-6 to Motomura and Japan went up 1-0 on us .. Well, that's guessed from one website's Japanes characters .. Good night .. More news in a few hours after I get up.

2.15 pm Japan -- Well the first Davis Cup match started 2 hours back and no score news to be found anywhere yet .. Japan tennis Association, which gavce great score updates online the last time we were there three years back is doing nothing this time .. I think I will call it a night (thursday night) for me and go to sleep .. Hopefully there will be good news from PA and LP to report when I wake up!

Apr 8 Notes

I received some press info that Leander was actually not too thrilled about the wednesday timing of the draw, a day earlier than the normal practice .. LP got to Osaka late Tuesday and had to decide the team soon after, because the draw was the next day .. He stuck to the team that was initially nominated as the playing four .. Hopefully not taking Harsh Mankad in would not come back to haunt us .. Anyway, LP's singles matches are always our key and Prakash will hopefully be fine in his matches .. RB is healthy though, and can do well if needed .. In any event, this tie will be very difficult once again thanks to the abilities and experience that Suzuki and Motomura have .. The doubles match with quite a highly ranked player Shimada in there is not necessarily a "gimme" either, though LP-MB will pull off that one .. Last time in Japan it took a big 5-set comeback win in the 5th match by Leander for us to win it .. Hopefully it won't get that close, but we have to expect it to be that much or tougher this tiime too.

The only thing I feel a bit bad about is that Harsh had to unnecessarily travel up there and disrupt his schedule, going to India for visas before Busan and mising these two weeks now as well .. He basically missed 2, may be 3, weeks of playing time .. It came at a bad time too because he has some big points falling off in two weeks and really needs to play some events to pick up points and keep his rank safe for Wimbledon qualies and challenger entries .. Tough for the country's #2 to be doing all that and also show some good results last week and earlier, only to get left out with the way things went .. If nothing was going to be changed in Japan, he could as well have not gone there once we found two weeks back that RB and PA were in playing shape and would be the team anyway .. Oh well, players sometimes end up having to do these things fo rthe country, I suppose - HM is used to this and more, anyway .. He is probably the only player in Davis Cup history to have played his first 12 singles matches all in AWAY ties (he still has not played a single davis cup match in India after 4 years of playing!), and all but a couple of them have been against top-100 or even top-10 players -- he gets a bad rap for his davis Cup record but people don't seem to remember how much of an underdoig he has been in all those matches .. HM will survive in the end though, as he has always done ..

In other news, Ankita reached the semi in Delhi as Shikha retired at 0-4 down in the first set - not sure what was the injury/illness .. Rushmi also lost, and later gace a walkover in doubles as well .. Need to find out what is up with her too .. We need her for fed Cup in two weeks, with Isha out and Sania needing somebody to back her up .. Ankita playing well at Delhi is good news though .. See the Delhi $10K page.

Karan Rastogi and Divij Sharan reached the QFs at the Japan ITF grade-1 .. Details later..

Apr 7 Notes

The Davis Cup draw was all done and the first day's (friday) matches are Praksh Amritraj vs Gouichi Motomura, followed by Leander Paes vs Takao Suzuki .. The doubles on day two will be Paes-Bhupathi vs Thomas Shimada/ Takahiro Terachi .. Amritraj-Suzuki followed by Paes-Motomura on the 3rd day but the reverse singles matchups can be changed on the 3rd day, substituting the players from the 4 nominated names .. Leander did not change the original nominations and so Rohan Bopanna remains the 4th player eligible to play if needed .. I suppose Harsh Mankad ended up losing two weeks of play except to give practice to the team, but hey, sometimes you end up doing that for the country .. It surprised me a bit though that he did not get the nod over Rohan even after beating RB last week, and having shown good form lately .. LP may have gone by practice form this week; if so Rohan may be in much better nick than earlier and that is certainly good news!   GO INDIA!! .. I expect this to be a very tough tie though.

At the Delhi womens ITF, Rushmi, Ankita and Shikha (USA) have reached the quarterfinals .. 8th seed Sonal got upset today by unseeded Chinese, Jie Hao .. See the Delhi $10K page.

At the grade-1 ITF juniors in Japan, the second round results are - [R2] (1) Karan Rastogi (6) d. Naoki Sato (JPN,167), 62 60 ..[R2] (2) Tara Iyer (73) d. Yurina Koshino (JPN,529), 75 61 ..[R2] Peter Lucasseen (NED,175) d. (8) Tushar Liberhan (33), 63 64 ..[R2] (7) Divij Sharan (42) d. Shuhei Uzawa (JPN,293), 62 63 .. [R2] (15) Navdeep Singh (74) d. Chia-Chu Lien (TPE,322), 62 63 ..[R2] Kento Takeuchi (JPN,211) d. (12) Rupesh Roy (64), 61 63 .. [R2] Erica Takao (JPN,565) d. (11) S Punam Reddy (145), 63 61 .. All of them had first round byes; Earlier in the first round, Sanam Singh (154) had lost to Uichi Ito (JPN,353) .. In the PQF round, we have, (1) Karan Rastogi (5) vs (14) Weerapat Doakmaiklee (THA, 68) .. (7) Divij Sharan (42) vs (10) Aljoscha Thron (GER, 43) .. (15) Navdeep Singh (74) vs (3) Remko De Rijke (NED, 15) and (2) Tara Iyer (45) vs (wc) Maya Kato (JPN, 1240) .. Not a great show so far .. This event is played on artificial grass, a surface many of our players may not have seen before.

Apr 6 Notes

The Davis Cup draw ceremony in Japan is on wednesdasy itself .. Actually the draw was done a couple of hours back, as it is already about 5 pm wednesday there .. No news yet - I was supposed to get an email from the media office there, but no sign of that .. It is late at night .. I will go to sleep -- hopefully we will see the draw soon .. It is very unusual for the draw to be done on wednesday - it is always doene on thursday, but for some reason JTA had announced a few weeks back that the draw ceremoney would be a day earlier than normal.

At the Delhi $10K, three indians (Rushmi, Ankita, Sonal) reached the PQF today .. Shikha Uberoi (USA) also advanced .. Rushmi had a very creditable win, over last week's runner-up Yan Chong Chen, somebody who has rarely lost many matches in India .. See the Delhi $10K page ..

Apr 5 Notes

Sania seems to have played a fantastic match but fell short of the goal of winning her first WTA main draw match in her 3rd attempt .. At the Tier-5 Casblanca WTA, the 17 year old wildcard surprised everybody by winning the first set 7-5 over the top seed Emilie Loit (FRA,40) a top-quality claycourt player .. She lost the next two sets 4-6 and 2-6 but fought till the end .. In the second set, after she fell behind a break, she had taken the fight to Loit and even had a chance to break back at 4-5 .. She could not convert that break point and lost the set there .. She could not get over the hump in the 3rd set .. It is yet another case of Sania showing that she continues to improve by leaps and bounds in her game .. The wins will come, very soon .. She has been quite unfortunate in running into the high seeds at all these events - hopefully one of these days she will get a chance to play somebody ranked lower ..

There was good news at the Delhi $10K as a couple more good players joined the list, who did not play at Mumbai .. Ankita Bhambri is playing this week and is seeded 7th .. I was surprised to find Shikha Uberoi (USA) in the draw as the 4th seed .. I believe she took a wildcard to enter .. Interestingly, she had originally entered the event and then withdrawn .. I suppose she found a way to come down and play in the end .. Rushmi is the second seed but has a tough match right away against unseeded Yan Chong Chen (CHN) who was the runner-up last week .. Geeta Manohar was the only Indian to qualify in, and she did well to pull upsets on two seeds in the qualies for that .. Only main draw doubles were played today .. See the Delhi $10K page..

The Indian juniors are all at the Tokyo grade-1 ITF juniors this week .. The main draw starts only on Tuesday there.

In other news, AITA has announced that there will be a good two-day course on fitness training/coaching by a very well-qualified ITF expert at Mumbai next week, conducted in conjunction with MSLTA .. You can find all the details at this page at the AITA site .. I wanted to leave a note here, for the sake of any players, and more importantly parents of young players in India, who may do themselves a big favor by attending the course .. I am not trying to do advertising for AITA/MSLTA (:-)), and actually had to email them and confirm that I could write about it here .. Though the course is for coaches, I have confirmed that they will accept players or parents also at the seminar .. The course, including three nights of hospitality and everything, costs a relatively cheap Rs.4000, which makes it probably one of the cheapest good fitness seminars you can attend anywhere in the world .. From what I can gather, ITF's Machar Reid, with a B.App.Sc in Human Movements and Biomechanics has good background on the topic .. So there should be some worthwhile info on Strength and Conditioning at this workshop .. I thought of writing about it here because from all I hear this is an area where Indian players still are not modern enough .. From simple stretching routines needed, to weight training necessary to build the proper muscles for tennis purposes .. I am really sick of hearing about all the injuries because many kids don't even do proper warm-up and stretching exercises .. This kind of focused seminars would help regular coaches and trainers in India, but rather than wait for the info to percolate through them, the parents/players might want to make use of opportunities like this first-hand .. Again, it didn't seem to cost an arm and a leg (pun intended) in registration fee, and that is why I thought of leaving a note here ..        [DETAILS --- Venue: MSLTA, 165, Dr. G.A. Ranade Tennis Complex, M.K. Road, Cooperage, Mumbai – 400021 .. Date:11-12 April 2004 .. Fees: Rs. 4000 with Hospitality (3 nights & 2 days), Rs. 2000 without hospitality (lunch & 2 coffee breaks at venue) ... Participants are expected to arrive in Mumbai on 10 April ’04. Hospitality starts with Dinner on 10 April & ends with breakfast on 13 April .. The Co-ordinator will be Mr. Prabhakar Bhat, Manager - MSLTA. All participants are requested to inform the arrival details to him. Tel: 91-22-22874806/08/09 Fax: 91-22-22873902 E-mail: mslta@mslta.org]

.. Previous notes are at Notes for the week ending on Apr 5 ..

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.