Indian-Tennis:
Daily News for the weeks ending on Sep 1, 2008
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Notes Index 1997 thru 2007)
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Sep 1 Notes
Leander reached the MxD semifinals, on the heels of reaching the
doubles QF yesterday, but Mahesh is done at the US Open after a close
loss in the doubles PQF .. Hesh's partner Mark Knowles was bothered by
a knee injury and had withdrawn from his MxD match yesterday - so the
PQF in doubles was expected to be iffy anyway .. Bad break for Hesh ..
Also going down in an upset today was Yuki Bhambri, seeded 5th in
doubles with his fellow-trainee at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy in
Florida, Filip Krajinovic, who is set to face Yuki in the
singles R2. Today's scores:
[QF] (5) Cara Black (ZIM)/ L.Paes d. Vladimir Ulihrova (CZE)/
Martin Damm (CZE), 75 62
[R3] (4) M.Bhupathi/ Mark Knowles (BAH) l. Maximo Gonzalez (ARG)/ Juan
Monaco (ARG), 62 46 46
[R1] (5) Y.Bhambri/ Filip Krajinovic (SRB) l. Takanyi Garanganga (ZIM)/
Karim-Md Maamoun (EGY), 16 64 [7]
Interestingly, the mixed doubles R2 match for leander and Cara never
appeared in any day's schedule, and there is no official score anywhere
in the draws at the US Open web site .. Just a blank space everywhere
.. I assume it was a walkover from Wozniacki and Matkowski, but no idea
.. In fact I was surprised to suddenly see their QF in the schedule for
today while no R2 was ever played or scheduled. Well, good to see
them in the SF, and they are the only seeded team left now .. In fact,
the seeds have all had a tough time in the men's doubles draw too - the
2nd seed Bryans in the lower half and the 7th seeds LP-Dlouhy in the
upper half are the only seeds left in the QFs .. By the way, the top
seeds Nestor/Zimonjic, sort of a nemesis for LP lately, got upset today
by Robert Lindstedt and Jarkko Nieminen - who will run into LP-Dlouhy
tomorrow in the QF.
At the € 30,000 challenger in Romania on red clay, Somdev Dev Varman faces the
8th seed David Marrero in the first round .. It is one of the first two
matches tomorrow at 10 am, as the main draw starts only Tuesday there
.. Somi is not playing doubles, and generally seems to be not focusing
on doubles for a little while till the singles plans are all well in
place.
Not much action at the $15K futures at Chennai, with only 4 main draw
singles matches today, along with a good bit of doubles .. Check out
our forum
thread for Jaydeep's score round up ..
Aug 31
Note-2
Lee and Dlouhy won the third round and are in the QF at the US Open ..
Easy 63 63 win ober Rik DeVoest (RSA) and Ashley Fisher (AUS) .. Ther
QF opponents will be determined tomorrow as the the top seeds Nestor/
Zimonjic play R.Lindstedt and J.Nieminen ..
Yuki Bhambri, the 12th seed in the junior draw, beat Denis Kudla
(USA,121), 62 57 63 .. He had an easy first set, but dropped serve in
the second game of the 2nd set to fall behind .. He evened it at 4-4
and 5-5 but immediately got broken both times and lost the second set
.. In the third set, though he again got broken the first time,
he kept breaking Kudla to win the match .. Kudla is not a bad player,
having recently reached the semifinal of a US pro futures (actually the
one that Somdev won a couple of months back) .. Good to see Yuki
playing OK, though he once again did not play enough preparatory
matches before the grand slam juniors .. He will have a tougher player
to tackle in the second round, his doubles partner, Filip Krajinovic
(SRB,24) who won the tough grade-1 Astrid bowl in belgium on clay in
May and followed that with qualifying into the wimbledon juniors and
reaching the semifinal! .. That match will be on Tuesday, after
they finish the remaining boys' singles R1 matches tomorrow.
Aug 31
Note-1
Today, LP and Dlouhy play Rik DeVoest and Ashley Fisher in the PQF of
doubles at the US Open. In the singles junior draw, 12th seeded
Yuki Bhambri is set to face Denis Kudla (USA) .. Both matches are at
about 1 pm there.
Awaiting the draw from the Brasov claycourt challenger in Romania,
starting tomorrow .. The hoopla returns for everybody again, as Somdev
gets back to court after a two week break since the Washington DC ATP
quarterfinals.
Two weeks of $15K ITF futures start now in India - at Chennai and Delhi
.. The qualies got completed today for the Chennai event, and six
Indians have qualified in .. See the scores posted by Sameer in our
sports-india thread
for the futures.
There was an article in the Times Of India
by Prajwal Hegde, who
followed up on the sordid "security situation" saga of some people
selling off Bengaluru without any explanation .. Excerpts (it is in
their ePaper - so no link that I can find) -
The World
Billiards Championship is slated to be held from September 1 to 10,
while Ricky Ponting’s team start the four-Test series of India in
Bangalore, where the first Test is scheduled to begin from October 9
.... If the Karnataka State Billiards Association Hall and the
Chinnaswamy stadium, a mere stone’s throw from the KSLTA, are safe for
international sporting action, why isn’t the KSLTA? .... Is Bangalore
really unsafe to host an international sporting event? Or is there more
to it than meets the eye? Could it be
that the promoters failed to find
a sponsor for the tournament and conveniently used the security factor
to get away? .... Several
calls to BIG Live over the last few days were
met with either ‘I’m not authorized to comment on this issue’ or ‘Ask
the ATP.’ .... “We don’t comment on specifics concerning
security,’’
Nicola Arzani, vice-president, media and marketing operations, said
when TOI quizzed the ATP on the procedure it followed while suspending
a tournament for security reasons. “The local promoter believed it to
be a security issue and regrettably the ATP accepted his petition to
suspend the 2008 event,’’ Arzani added .... Prior to suspending the
tournament, the ATP had asked KSLTA secretary Sunder Raju his views on
the security situation .... “I told them the security risk perception
this time was no different than when we had other ATP and WTA
tournaments here in the last seven years. The government and the police
said they would do everything in their power to ensure a safe
tournament,’’ Raju said.
KSLTA's Sunder Raju is absolutely right in what he says .. As Prajwal
says, there seem to be some people trying to pass the buck for a little
"mischief" that they thought they could get away with it. We have
news for you, folks .. India is not a banana republic. Some of us
pay attention, OK? ..
Aug 30
Notes
Mahesh and Samantha Stosur (AUS) went down in a close match in the
second round of the MxD at the US Open, 62 36 (10-12) to Rennae Stubbs
(AUS) and Robert Lindstedt (SWE) ..
Also going down in a close match was Sudanwa Sitaram (IND,94) in the
final qualies of the junior singles .. He lost Jose Hernandez (#60) of
the Dominican Republic, 64 36 36 .. Earlier in the Q1, he had beaten
Kosaku Hirota (JPN,1024) 62 36 61 .. Akash Wagh (IND,121) had lost 26
36 in the Q1to the 16th seed James Seal (USA,103) .. Akash has really
not shown good results for the last couple of years though he seemed to
be a player of high potential earlier on - he is done with the junior
eligibility this year, but it is good to see 17 year old Sudanwa doing
fine, and he is eligible for the junior tour next year.
At the Adidas-MCC national
u14 and u18 in Chennai, the u18 boys title went to 4th seed
Abhijit Tiwari (UP), and the u14 girls title went to Sharon Paul (TN)
in easy 61 61 and 62 64 finals, respectively .. The much-awaited
final between the Mharashtrian firends and doubles partners, Kura
Shriff and Ashvarya Shrivastava was a dandy but Kyra pulled it off in a
63 46 64 match .. The u14 boys final between the u14 world final bronze
medal team mates Ronit Bisht (DLI) and Ramkumar Ramanathan (TN) turned
out to be a damp squib with Ronit running away with a 62 60 score
.. See the article
in The
Hindu for some details .. Check out the photograph - that is 12
year old Ronit on the left? .. Hmm .. The dude looks much bigger and
quite different than the kid at Prostejov earlier this month (check out
the Prostejov podium picture I had pisted three weeks back here
- scroll down to the Aug 11 notes) .. Who impersonated Ronit, I want to
know! :) ..
Aug 29
Notes
Both Mahesh and Leander advanced to the PQFs of doubles at the US Open
.. [R2] (7) L.Paes/ Lukas Dloughy (CZE) bt Eduardo Schwank (ARG
)/ Potito Starace (ITA) 64 16 63 ..Their PQF opponents are Rik De Voest
(RSA) and Ashley Fisher (AUS)
.. [R2] (4) M.Bhupathi/ Mark Knowles (BAH) d. Yves Allegro (SUI)/ Horia
Tecau (ROU) 63 63 ..They face the Argentinians, Maximo Gonzalez and
Juan Monaco next ..
At the $10K Thai women's ITF, 6th seed Sanaa Bhambri fell, 61 36 36 in
the SF to unranked qualifer Yi Yang (CHN) who had upset Ankita earlier
in a comeback three-setter too .. Yeek. That doesn't look good ..
I don't know the story on this 18 yr old girl Yang - who seems to be a
"virtual unknown" who did not do anything much in the juniors either,
with a top rank of just #323, though she had reached a grade-3 final in
China a couple of years back. Last week's doubles champs, Sanaa
and Ankita, had fallen in the doubles SF yesterday to Chinese
qualifiers Yang Yi and Zhi-Xian Guo 36 26 too .. What kind of spinach
are these Chinese girls eating out there? ..
At the AITA Chennai national series u14 & u18, the finalists were
decided today .. In the girls u18s, Ashvarya Shrivastava got past
the top seed Rashmi Teltumbde 63 63 and faces the second seed Kyra
Shroff, who beat Shwetha Solanki in straight sets too.. The two
finalists are in the Appollo program, FIST program, Bhupathi program,
and Globosport (whatever fits the context - they are all kinda
connected with Mahesh's hand somewhere in there! :)) .. I had written
about Ashvarya from some three years back and had then thought she had
better results than Rashmi and Kyra, but she seems to be somewhat more
inconsistent among these three top players who are our top three u16
juniors now .. In girls' u14, Sharon Paul (TN) and Eetee Mehta
(GUJ) are in the finals ..
In the boys u18 section, 6th seed Kaza Vinayak Sharma (AP) upset the
top seed Ronak Manuja (MAH) who was also in some stomach problems, to
reach the final .. He runs into the 4th seed Abhijit Tiwari of
Chattisgargh .. The boys u14 was the one sectiom where I had no doubt
who the two finalists would be .. Ronit Bisht and Ramkumar Ramanathan
of the world u14 junior bronze team , who were the top two seeds ..
Neeraj Elangovan, whom I talked about yesterday, did not go down
quietly - as he took a set off Ra,kumar before the second seed stepped
on the pedal for a 46 62 60 win ..
Aug 28
Notes
At the US Open, Mahesh advanced to the second round of both doubles and
mixed doubles today .. [R1] (4) M.Bhupathi/ Mark Knowles
(BAH) d. Johan Brunstrom (SWE)/ Thomas Johansson (SWE), 63 64 .. The
second round is against Yves
Allegro (SUI) and Horia Tecau (ROU) .. In the MxD, [R1] Samantha Stosur
(AUS)/ M.Bhupathi d. Alexa Glatch (USA)/ Scott Lipsky (USA), 63 63 ..
Unfortunately, the Indo-Pak express got nowhere, as they fell in the
first round, 57 36 to the French pair, Marc Gicquel and
Sebastien Grosjean.
At the $10K Thailand women's ITF at Nonthaburi, the 6th seed Sanaa
Bhambri (IND,527) reached the SF with a good 61 46 64 win over
Stephanie
Wiltshire (AUS) who had upset 2nd seed Rushmi earlier .. Up next is
qualifer Yi Yang who had upset 5th seeded Ankita earlier ..
At the "Adidas-MCC" junior u14 and u18 national event in Chennai, a
surprise run so far has been in the u14 boys section by 13 year old
Neeraj Elangovan (TN), ranked only 63rd in the u14 AITA rankings .. He
upset the third seed Arjun Kadhe (MAH) ranked #4 by a 62 75 score
yesterday and upset the 14th seed Vilasier Khate (HAR,19) by an easy 64
62 score today .. He will have to handle the second seeded statemate
Ramkumar
Ramanathan, ranked third, in the SF now .. The top seed and India #1 in
the u14, Ronit Bisht, is also in the semi .. In the girls u14s, the top
two seeds, both from Maharashtra and ranked #1 and #2 in the national
rankings got upset .. #6 Sharon Paul (TN) upset the #1 Prarthana
Thombre and #7 Amritha Mukherjee (WB) upset the 2nd seed Vaidehi
Bhagwat - both in easy straight sets .. 16th ranked Sansitha Nandakumar
(TN) and 20th ranked Eetee Mehta (GUJ) are the surprise entries into
the SF.
In the u18s at Chennai, the girls section has been a bit more
interesting as most of the top ranked
girls are there, as opposed to the u18 boys section where the top three
are in the USA (Yuki Bhambri, Sudanwa Sitaram, Akash Wagh) .. In the
girls u18, four of the top five active players in the AITA rank list
(Poojashree having stopped playing the juniors) are in the semis! .. #1
Rushmi Teltumbde, #2 Kyra Shroff, #5 Swetha Solanki and #6 Ashwarya
Shrivastava are the semifinals - which promise to be very good .. On
the boys u18s, the top seed Ronak Manuja (MAH,5) and 6th seed Abhijit
Tiwari (Chattis,10) are the highest ranked players remaining, as the
second see Chandril Sood (UP,6) was upset by semifinalist Srikar Alla
(AP,35)
earlier and the third seed Christopher Marquis (MAH,9) was upset by 6th
seed Kaza Vinayak Ram (AP,15) today ..
Aug 27
Notes
Leander and Cara Black advanced to the second round of the Mixed
doubles draw at the US Open with an easy 63 62 win over the young
American wildcards, Melanie Oudin and Donald Young .. Mahesh and Rohan
have not been in action yet .. Our friend from Pakistan, Aisam Quereshi
had made it into the singles draw as a lucky loser but went down in
four sets to Carlos Moya .. Tomorrow, Mahesh plays his doubles and
Mixed doubles first round, and Rohan/ Aisam play their first round
doubles.
An addendum to what I wrote about the disturbing cancellation of the Bengaluru Open
with ATP stating "local promoter's security concerns" as the reason -
today Mr. CS Sunder Raju of the Karnataka State Lawn Tennis Association
(KSLTA) stated to The Hindu
that they had nothing to do with either organizing the event or
cancelling it .. KSLTA had only offerred to help with the Kingfisher
tennis stadium .. So, we should not blame the KSLTA folks for having
created any phantom security situation stories .. Mr. Raju reportedly
said that the sports promotion group "Big Live" owned by Anil Ambani
were the ones who were organizing ATP Bangalore .. Well, I don't know
much about "Big Live", except that they are a company floated out of
Adlabs Films late last year, apparently to focus on organizing sports
and entertainment events (but probably with an eye to organizaing the
2010 Commonwealth Games opening and closing ceremonies etc, as I saw in
a news report) .. Anyway, if it was BigLive who created this canard
about a security situation and told ATP to announce it to the whole
world, with no concern on how it would cause our country (and
Bengaluru) to be viewed around the world, it is pitiable and
shameful. I am tempted to do wordplay with the name Big Live, but
it wouldn't be fair to even insinuate that they did anything, without
knowing the full facts. Anyway, I continue to be pretty annoyed
at seeing the news item at the ATP front page about the reason for the
cancellation.
Meanwhile, the mates who are usually the first to wet their pants on
hearing of bomb blasts and "security situations," the Australian
cricket, have found Bengaluru perfectly fine and have cleared the city
for the cricket test starting on October 9th, barely 4 days after the
end of the cancelled tennis event .. Either a serious security
situation is there 5 weeks from now, that suddenly disappears 4 days
later, or somebody is trying to pull a fast one somewhere! .. By the
way, the IBSF world billiards championships are also supposed to be in
Bengaluru from Sep 1 thru 10th - and IBSF has not cancelled it .. So,
no security situation is expected next week - it's only 5 weeks from
now that all Bengaluru folks should consider leaving town, if they
believe the tennis organizers :) ...
At the $10K Thailand womens ITF, the 4th seed Rushmi Chakravarthi was
upset 64 62 by unranked Australian Stephanie Wiltshire (AUS) and the
5th seed Ankita Bhambri was upset 46 62 75 by the unranked Chinese
qualifier Yi Yang .. The 6th seed Sanaa Bhambri (IND,527) had
a bit of trouble but came through in a 36 63 64 win over Tomoko Dokei
(JPN,639), as the only Indian quarterfinalist - but she has to play
Wiltshire who has upset Parul Goswami and Rushmi so far.
There have not been a whole lot of upsets in the "Adidas-MCC" junior (u14 and u18)
national AITA events in progress at the MCC in Chennai .. The
second seed Chandril Sood was upset by 13th seed Sikar Alla in the u18
boys .. All the talented youngsters like Ronit Bisht and
Ramkumar Ramanathan in the u14, and Rashmi Teltumbde, Kyra Shriff,
Tanvi Shah and Ashwarya Shrivastava in the girls u18 are in the QFs ..
14 yr old Ramkumar (member of the recent world bronze medallist Indian
u14 team with Ronit and Digvijay) also qualified into the u18 and went
a couple of rounds .. Good job by him .. Saurabh Singh of our current
u16 junior Davis Cup team fell in the u18 today to third seed
Christopher Marquis .. More competitive and interesting matches are in
store now from the QF onwards ..
Aug 26
Notes
Leander had a good start in doubles today at the US Open .. [R1] (7) L.Paes)/ Lukas Dloughy
(CZE) d. Oscar Hernandez (ESP)/ Albert Mondanes (ESP) 67(2) 61 64
.. Up next for them will be Eduardo Schwank (ARG ) and Potito Starace
(ITA) ..
The mixed doubles draw also came out .. Lee is seeded 5th with Cara
Black (ZIM) and they play the American youngsters, Melanie Oudin and
Donald Young
.. Mahesh is unseeded this time, playing with Samantha Stosur (AUS) ..
They also face an American pair - Alexa Glatch and Scott Lipsky ..
The $10K ITF womens' event in Thailand is in progress at Nonthaburi,
and our results are much better this week compared to the last, as all
three seeded Indians reachedthe second round .. Fourth seeded Rushmi
Chakravarthi (IND,508) had a very good 61 62 win over Shlomo Karen
(ISR,598) yesterday, and faces Stephanie Wiltshire (AUS) next ..
Wiltshire had beaten Parul Goswamy (IND,689) by a 76(5) 46 60 score in
the R1 .. Fifth seeded Ankita Bhambri (IND,522) beat Achiraya Sprirome
(THA,NR), 62 46 61 and now squares off against the unranked Chinese
qualifier Yang Yi in the R2 .. Sixth seeded Sanaa Bhambri (IND,527)
beat qualifier Katherine Westbury of THA and runs into Tomoko Dokei
(JPN,639) next.. Rushmi and Bhambri sisters have reached the doubles QF
as well.
Aug 25
Notes
Nothing much significant going on right now on court, as we await the
doubles draw to get going at the US Open by mid-week ..
The other important news is that both the pro events scheduled in
September and October in India have been cancelled .. The WTA Sunfeast
Open Mumbai has been cancelled due to problems with venues, and the
ATP Bengaluru Open has been cancelled due to "security concerns" .. The
latter item does not make much sense to me .. Has the Indian or
Karnataka government, Bengaluru police, RAW, CBI or whichever
appropriate agency been the source of this "security concern" or is it
just that the tournament was having trouble attracting even a top-15
player's dog to take a sniff at the tournament? .. As I saw the
tournament organizers' openly saying earlier in a press release when
#18 Tsonga was announced that "nobody else seems to be coming," (I was
impressed by their honesty, actually) it seemed pretty clear that they
were in some trouble, or that they did not have the money or other
wherewithals to get some top players .. Then to suddenly hear this
"security concern" as posted by ATP at their site today, was a bit too
much .. If this was a white lie to save face, that would be utterly
shameful because it is India's prestige that goes down when we cancel
events due to cheap statements on security concerns .. In fact, I
hardly remember any high-profile sports event being suddenly cancelled
for security fears like this .. Aren't we supposed to have a cricket
test in Bengaluru later this year? .. Heck, aren't we supposed to hold
mega events like CWG and hockey world cup in a couple of years in India
- what about "security situation" then? .. An announcement to the whole
wide world by ATP that there is some phantom "security concern" is how
we do things in India? .. Somebody let ATP do that? .. We are what,
Pakistan? ... Again, if Indian people put the blame on the city and our
country to save face, they should be brought to task by somebody ..
Shame on you .. If that is not the case and a proper security
assessment was done by proper agencies in India who suggested
cancelling the event, of course, I will shut up .. If many players told
the organizers that they were scared to come, again I can understand to
some extent - but then I would make sure that ATP would not write that
there is a "security situation" but rather blame the payers ..
Otherwise, I want to see the proper security agencies in India issuing
a press release that they had not advised the cancellation of the
Bengaluru event!
Meanwhile, where the frig is our press?? ... The two ATP events are
among largest international sports events we do every year, outside of
cricket (and Golf?) - on prize money... Our press, including the local
Deccan Herald, seems least bit bothered to even find out what was up
with the tournament, a whole week after we mentioned here that ATP had
talked about a "situation" in Bengaluru .. Not a single newspaper in
India has cared to find out and tell us what exactly is going on.
As for Mumbai WTA, again, no news on what exactly was happening, but
thankfully there were no nationally shameful statements coming from
there or WTA, for me to complain. I know, I know, our press has
been spending time trying to interview Abhinav's, Vijendar's and
Susheel's grandmothers, dhobis and dhootwallahs to fill up fishwrap
space in the latest feeding frenzy. I do have many friends
among the sports writers, but sorry friends, you have all collectively
dropped the ball on this matter - however, I understand that some of
you are not back from Beijing, though..
Bottom line - Chennai Open ATP coming up in January is the next
international tour event in India - barring unforeseen last-minute
"security situations" .. Everybody will need to wait till that to see
Somdev reaching the semis or better :) ....
The first AITA national tournaments of the year for the u14 and u18
players just got underway in Chennai .. The qualies were over the
weekend. Will give some updates during the week.
.. Previous news
are
at
Notes
for the weeks ending on Aug 25, 2008 ..
..
Please email questions/comments/criticism to me email me -
R.Jayakrishnan