LP/MB/NS/Indian-Tennis:
Notes for the weeks ending on June 28, 2004
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June 28 Note-1
Today was an utter disaster at Wimbledon, as we continue
with the worst year on grass courts that India has ever had, without
a doubt .. First, last year's runners-up, MadMax went down in the 3rd
round at Wimbledon .. [R3] (3) M.Bhupathi/ M.Mirnyi l. (16) Julien
Knowle (AUT)/ Nenad Zimonjic (SCG), 46 63 68 .. This was followed
by our juniors dropping their matches one by one, with the whole stuff
getting over in a hurry in one day, till Neha Uberoi of USA gave
us something to cheer for with a win in the evening .. [R1] (12) Karan Rastogi
(IND,10) l. G.D. Jones (NZL,50) 46 46 .. [R1] Divij Sharan (IND,32) l. Chu-Huan
Yi (TPE,24), 16 63 16 .. [R1] Tushar Liberhan (IND,29) l. Viktor Troicki
(SCG,21) 76(5) 67(2) 16 .. [R1] (WC) Neha Uberoi (USA) d. Ana Jerman (SLO,37),
62 64 .. All the losses are against good players, but this is way too depressing
.. When they all kept racking up losses the last few weeks, we kept waiting
that somehow things would turn around by Wimbledon .. Not really .. I
just cannot believe how we have messed up the grass advantage we have
had over the years .. Whatever excuses are given for totally canning the
domestic grasscourt season (and I myself have always been a big supporter
of the idea of our kids needing a lot more clay experience and "modern
tennis" coaching), but this is crazy .. It is shameful that Indian kids
look this lost on grass .. Our traditional stregths are something we
should not give up easily .. It is something like zero wins in 10-15
main draw matches so far in the junior grass circuit for Indians in Europe
.. We should immediately take some steps to put some grass events at the
junior level .. Not too many; even 2 or 3 a year would do .. But even that
is much more than what the kids play in most countries where there are no
grass courts; and we still have some pretty big clubs with grass courts
.. Also, there is also perhaps a timely reason to do something .. The
skills you learn on grasscourts are probably no longer as useless as they
were for the last decade or so .. With the players coming up around the world
(and even many coaches who finished playing in the last 5-10 years) having
not played much against players with such skills, there is some subtle advantages
to be gained from some grass experience .. This is just my uneducated opinion
as usual, and I may be wrong, but I feel this way .. In any event, something
must be done immediately by AITA with regard to a domestic grass schedule
.. Heck we have not even held a grasscourt nationals in a long time .. Hope
AITA which has been quite pro-active in recent years would get the ball rolling
on this matter.
To add to the misery, MadMax lost unexpectedly .. Mahesh
dropped serve the first time itself in the first set, but he came
back and played very well in the second set, according to the Wimbledon
site's article .. In the 3rd set, Max finally dropped serve late and
our guys were oiusted .. Yikes .. Mahesh now loses some 600 odd points
in his point total - it would not drop his ranking all that much but
he lost a chance to perhaps go to the top and claim a #1 spot sometime
this year .. And the lack of a final or title in three grand slams
for LP and MB wouldn't help their chances for a top four seeding at
Olympics too, I would think.
Harsh Mankad and Aisam Qureshi are the top seeds in
doubles at the $25K+H Montauban challenger in France .. They play
tomorrow (Tuesday) against a wildcard team Oggie Kolev (AUS) and Jean-Rene
Lisnard (FRA) .. HM's singles first round will be on wednesday ..
The Cordoba challenger singles draw is nowhere to be found yet - I
am trying to see if Prakash went there by any chance in the last minute.
The masters leg of the Indian satellites have started
well for the Indians .. Vijay Kannan, P.ravishankar, Ashutosh Singh,
Jaco Mathew, Rahul Syed, all won today, picking up 4 extra circuit
points and 2 or 3 ATP points each .. A nice draw for Indians, in fact
.. The eight seeds with byes will play tomorrow .. Sunil Kumar was
originally in the doubles draw with Kamala Kannan but had to pull
out (probably due to the injury) replaced by Yu of Hong Kong .. SKS is
still there in singles as the 4th seed .. See the satellite
masters page and the points
page..
June 27 Note-2
Third-seeded Mahesh and Max play the doubles 3rd round
on Monday at Wimbledon against the 16th seed Julien Knowle (AUT)
and Nenad Zimonjic (SCG) - the first match at 12 noon (4.30 am India)
.. Karan Rastogi, Divij Sharan, Tushar Liberhan and Neha Uberoi (USA)
are all on the schedule for tomorrow. Karan plays at 11 am
in a first match.
Harsh Mankad, who was the very last entry in the main
draw, is drawn to face Viktor Bruthans (SVK,254) in the first round
at the $25K+H Montauban challenger, where the main draw strats on
Tuesday .. Bruthans is at a career high rank and just won a futures
in Ukraine today, after entering the draw through two qualifying matches
(as he had not entered the event early enough) .. So he is in very
good form ..
Still have not seen the main draw at the $125K+H Cordoba
challenger in Spain .. The cut had drastically fallen in the last
day to somewhere below Prakash Amritraj, but I am not sure if he
told them he was going there .. He was originally not planning to go
there, I believe ..
As for the women, Shikha Uberoi (USA) continued
her red-hot form, with a second title in two days .. She won the
$10K Edmonds (OK, USA) event, I believem but I have not seen all
her scores since the second round .. As of a week back, Shikha was
4th out from the main draw at the $50K Los Gatos challenger in Northern
California that starts on Tuesday .. I don't know if she has made
it, but hopefully USTA would give her a wildcard .. Sunitha Rao (USA)
is in the main draw there .. Megha Vakharia is listed for the $10K at
Southlake, Texas for this coming week.
Also, Rushmi Chakravarthi is listed among the top-4
entries at the $10K in seoul this coming week .. Sai Jayalakshmy,
Nandini Perumal, Parul Goswami and Geetha manohar are listyed for
the $10K at Tlemcen, Algeria.
June 27 Note-1
Shoot, things are just not going with any rhythm for
Leander right now .. LP-DR got upset at Wimbledon, but MadMax
advanced in the second round .. [R2] (3) M.Bhupathi/ M.Mirnyi
d. Ramon Sluiter (NED)/ Martin Verkerk (NED), 75 63 .. [R2]
(11) L.Paes/ D.Rikl l. Travis Parrott (USA)/ Vince Spadea (USA),
67(6) 36 .. I could not follow the match at all (but I believe
there was a small group, including Sania Mirza who logged in too, who
were following the matches at our chatroom) .. LP loses most of the 450
points he had from the Wimbledon semifinals last year .. This does not
help his rank situation .. Lost 375 more from his point total of 1815 and
his rank will be down to about #30 now .. LP also has 300 more points
to defend (Gstaad title in the week after Wimbledon last year and a QF
at the Montreal masters) before the ranks are looked at for OIympics
seeding .. It looks like LP will not be ranked higher that #25
and basically no spoecial argument can be made due to recent results
for a seeding over those like Black-Ullyett (ZIM) and Damm-Suk (CZE)
.. Barring the Indian Express getting some serious respect from the seeding
committee for old deeds, they are pretty much in danger of missing out
on a top four seeding, if our guesses are correct .. Not the end of the
world or anything, though .. LP and MB are confirmed to play together
at TWO events (Montreal and Cincinnati masters) before the Olympics and
what looks more important is how quickly they get to old form in two weeks
.. Mahesh also has a lot of points to defend for the runner-up finish
at Wimbledon, and it is important for him and Mirnyi to go deep at Wimbledon.
Rain returned by late evening and play is suspended
at Wimbledon now .. Tara Iyer, probably still affected by the injury
that caused her to retire last week at the ITF grasscourt juniors
in Philadelphia, does not seem to have had enough to get past the talented
kid Evgenia Rodina (RUS,39), losing 16 36 today .. Divij and Tushar
were expected to play late evening matchesx but looks like it will
be tomorrow now, due to rain.
I believe Harsh managed to catch a flight from Madrid
to Toulose this evening and must have got to the Montauban challenger
where he made the main draw in the last minute after he was about
to sign in for the qualies at Cordoba (Spain) .. Harsh is expected to
play doubles at Montauban with Aisam Qureshi .. I believe Parakash also
would have easily made the main draw at any of the three clay challengers
easily but he only entered at the hardcourt challenger in Cordoba and
did not make the cut .. Actually he may have made the cut but not sure
if he had planned to go there, as he was 13 out just about two days back
.. I don't think Rohan is playing anywhere next week either .. Vishal Punna
was just a spot or two out from the main draw at the Canada futures and
may have even made it in by the end this weekend .. Stephen Amritraj,
who has been doing the commendable work of playing qualies and getting his
game back in place after a whole 18 months of iunjury problems, has once
again reached the final qualies at a US futures .. He has qualified in a
couple of times through 4 round qualies though he has not won a main draw
round to get a point .. Glad to see Stephen playing well and getting some
matches under the belt.
June 26 Notes
Well, the rain menace does not seem to be ending at
Wimbledon .. It was a washout today and so LP, MB, the juniors
etc will try to do it tomorrow .. They have now chnaged the traditional
off day (the middle sunday) to a playing day now.
Harsh Mankad had reached Corodba (Spain) yesterday,
ready to play the qualies for the challenger there, when he found
that the cuts at three Euiropean challengers (Mantova-ITA, Montauban-FRA
and Zell-GER) were all dropping like rocks .. HM was 35 out 2 days back
at those places, but was up to effectively 10th out by yesterday ..
Today (Saturday) evening he went down to sign-in at Cordoba, called the
other places just to check, and found that he was making the draw at
Montauban .. One reason for the last minute drops in the cuts was that
Wimbledon rained out and a few players who still have not lost there had
to be taken off the challenger lists by Saturday evening .. So he has now
taken a train out of Cordoba and is on his way to France .. Ah, the uncertain
lives in the company of a suitcase that the circuit players have! .. HM did
not mind that the other challengers are on clay .. "Make the singles draw
even in Timbuktu and can find a way to get there, will play" seems to be
his rule now .. Turns out that some four train changes and an overnight stayover
somewhere is needed to get from deep inside Spain to go around the mountains
into France .. He has left sunday morning from Cordoba and will get to
Montauban by Monday night.
Bad news at Delhi today, as Sunil Kumar was hardly
able to do much because of the hip problem in the final .. Lost
the first set 0-6 to Sugiyama and he had to call it quits... Hope
he heals in the next couple of days and can pick up some wins in the
all-important final leg.
One of our 15 year olds made his first trip abroad
this week and showed some impressive results this week ... Tejesvi
Rao was in the grade-4 juniors in Indonesia this week and made
a terrific run, upsetting the 7th seed and 4th seed on the way to
the semifinal where he went down to the 2nd seed after a three-set fight
.. That is the kind of stuff that makes everyone sit up and take note
of a kid .. Great temperament and attitude to be going abroad and doing
that in the very first eventg .. We will hope for a lot more from this
kid and keep an eye on him! (His scores are all at the forum thread on
our juniors)
June 25 Notes
Leander and David Rikl had to work hard for a win
today but they came through -- [R1] (11) L.Paes/ D.Rikl d. Daniele
Bracciali (ITA)/ Georgio Galimberti (ITA), 75 67(3) 63 .. Tomorrow's
schedule show Mahesh and Max playing the doubles second round early
in the day against the Dutch pair of Ramon Sluiter and Martin Verkerk,
with Lee and David playing Vince Spadea and Travis Parrott of the
US in an evening match .. Lots of rain is again in the forecast though
- we will see how well it goes.
Also on the schedule tomorrow are the junior matches
.. Karan, Divij, Tushar, Tara and Neha (USA) are all in the draw,
with Tushar, Divij and Tara playing tomorrow .. [R1] (12) Karan
Rastogi vs. G.D. Jones (NZL) who is the same guy who beat KR rather
badly last week at Roehampton .. Karan has an extremely tough draw
further down too, as he is bracketed with the top seed Gael Monfils
and the very talented Brendan Evans in the same quarter of the draw
.. [R1] Divij Sharan vs. Chu-Huan Yi (TPE) .. [R1] Tushar Liberhan
vs. Viktor Troicki (SCG) .. [R1] Evgeniya Rodina (RUS) vs Tara Iyer
.. Tara has hopefully recovered from the injuries .. Last week she
played at the US grass courts in Philadelphia but retired in the second
match due to injury .. She has been plagued with that for quite a qhile
now, but always nice to see her playing - I think she was one of the
last entries there; we had thought she was not there as her name was
not in the qualies draw .. Also in the draw is the wildcard Neha Uberoi
(USA), who is a string contendor for the title itself .. She starts against
Ana Jerman (SLO) .. The qualies for the Wimbledon juniors were over the
last two days and the news was bad from our kids .. [Q1] (6) Elizabeth Plotkin
(USA) d. Sanaa Bhambri, 36 76(1) 63 .. Sanaa is still not back to her best
form pre-injury last year, but this was a good match against a good player
.. [Q1] Alex Krasnoroutsky (RUS) d. Rupesh Roy, 63 75 .. Rupesh has had a
tough time abroad this year but will hopefully get the right coaching and
will later get ready for the next couple of years in the juniors .. Navdeep
Singh upset the 6th seed Michael Johnson (USA) 26 62 86 but then lost to
Takanobu Fuji (JPN) ..
At the $10K at Edmond (OK, USA), Megha Vakharia
got surprisingly upset in the second round but Shikha moved on
and both together have reached the doubles QF .. [R1] (3) Meghaa
Vakharia d. Lauren Imre (USA) 63 63 .. [R2] l. Kaori Onishi (JPN)
16 61 36 .. [R1] (2) Shikha Uberoi (USA) d. Laura Ritchey-Thomas (USA)
63 63 .. [R2] d. Whitney Jones (USA) 63 61 .. In doubles, [R1] (1) Uberoi/Vakharia
d. Joyce Bergman and Janet Bergman of USA, 62 62 ..
At the Delhi satellite, Sunil Kumar Sipaeya
had a gutsy win in three sets over Aqeel Khan in the semis ..
SKS was virtually unable to move late in the match due to a hip
problem but he somehow hung in there to finish the match and reach
the final against Japan's Sugiyama, who has now gone to the top of the
circuit list after his semifinal win over Kamala Kannan .. Sunil is now
4th behind Sugiyama, Vishal Uppal, and Joshua Goodall .. Ajay Ramaswami
and Vishal Uppal won the doubles title today. See the satellite
3rd leg page and the circuit
points list pages ..
June 24 Note-2
Though there was another afternoon rain delay,
MB's match at the Wimbledon got done today and MadMax advanced
without sweating much .. [R1] (3) M.Bhupathi/ M.Mirnyi d.
Hicham Arazi (MAR)/ Joshua Eagle(AUS), 63 64 .. Leander and
Rikl play their first round tomorrow (Friday) at about 1.30 pm
on court 6 ..
At the $25K ITF in Incheon, KOR, Rushmi Chakravarthi
and Emily Hewson went down in the QF, 36 36 to Su-Wei Hsieh and
Chin-Wei Chan of Taiwan .. It looks like Megha Vakharia won
her first round at the $10K ITF in Edmond, Oklahoma, USA, but no scores
available (thanks go to Neil for watching the local newspaper, which
reported the other seeds losing, so Megs must have won) .. 2nd seed Shikha
won easily, 63 63 over Laura Ritchey-Thomas(USA) ..
June 24 Note-1
Mahesh's doubles first round match might get
started at Wimbledon today, it seems .. It may be at about 4.30
pm there after Mardy Fish's singles match on the same court that
is in the second set now at 2.30 pm ..
There was some good news today from Globosport
who announced that Neha Uberoi has been given a wildcard into
the junior singles at Wimbledon .. It is on the basis of her
great show at the Luxilon Cup invitational earlier this year ..
As NU has only played one junior event over the last year (the Orange
bowl lkast december, where she reached the final), she does not have
much of a ranking in the juniors, and needs a wildcard .. Mahesh Bhupathi
was quoted to be showing his happiness at how well Sania, Shikha and
Neha are coming along.
At the satellite 3rd leg today, the Pakistani
Aqueel Khan somehow pulled out a match in three sets against
Vishal Uppal whose winning streak ended at 7 matches from last
week .. Vishal is still at the top of the circuit list and can
probably use a couple of of extra days of rest before a big push
next week at the masters .. Sunil Kumar reached the semifinal beating
a fighting Ashutosh Singh in three sets .. 21 year old Ashutosh has
been a bit of a surprise in this circuit - and he fully justified the
wildcard he got this week .. 22 year old Kamala Kannan, perhaps the most
heartening story so far, has come through to the semis beating P.Ravishankar
quite easily .. Ajay Ramaswami could not do much against the Japanese
4th seed Sugiyama though .. As for Sunil Kumar, incredibly, he
still has a chance to even tie for the circuit leader spot if he can
win two rounds now and Kamala can upset Sugiyama .. See the satellite
3rd leg page and the circuit
points list page .. The top eight seeds for the masters
leg have now been determined .. They will all have first round
byes and are assured of 5 more circuit points .. The ATP points are
beginning to build up for the top few players and the next few matches
prove to be cruicial .. Basically big ATP points come through only
for those who go over about 20 or 25 circuit points ..
June 23 Notes
OK, back with the updates again, after a big
computer crash and all ..
Rain continues to be the story at Wimbledon
.. Third seeds Mahesh amd Max Mirnyi are scheduled to play
their first round match thursday afternoon but some more rain
is expected .. MB-MM play Hicham Arazi and Joshua Eagle .. Not
necessarily a gimme match .. One is never sure of what Arazi would
do on any given day, knowing his talent, and Eagle is a solid doubles
player - but the 3rd seeds should be moving on .. They have reduced
the first three rounds of doubles to best of three, due to all the
time lost to rain so far - so there is always a bigger danger of upsets
.. Leander and Rikl play the Italian qualifiers Daniele Bracciali and
Georgio Galimberti, but their match may be on Friday .
Megha Vakharia is the 3rd seed at the $10K
in Edmonds, Oklahoma, USA this week .. She plays a qualifier
Lauren Imre (USA) in the first round .. Shikha Uberoi (USA),
the winner of last week's $10K at Fort Worth (Texas), is the second
seed and plays Laura Ritchey-Thomas (USA) in the first round ..
Shikha and Megha are seeded top in doubles and they face Joyce Bergman
and Janet Bergman of USA .. There has been some serious thundershowers
there and things are a bit delayed it seems.
Shikha and Neha Uberoi were selected as the
USTA players of the week for last week, for their fine show
at Fort Worth, reaching the finals .. Here is a USTA write-up
on the sisters .. I must say that I am surprised at how well
Shikha has been playing lately .. She struggled for a few years
in the circuit and I had nearly given up on her as a true prospect
- but not so fast, buster, says SU .. She beat Neha quite convincingly
in the final last week .. You might remember Neha beating Shikha
earlier this year at the Hyderbad WTA qualies .. I think Neha may
be going to the Wimbledon juniors next week .. She can still qualify
for that .. I hope Sania will also be there at Wimbledon next week -
saw somewhere that she might play too.
Rushmi Chakravarthi is at the $25K ITF event
at Incheon. Korea, and had a surprisingly poor outing, losing
in the first round to Yoo-Mi Jung (KOR,801), 16 06 .. I hope
Rushmi is not injured .. She tends to do poorly at times in events
abroad (unlike how she does in India where she is virtually unbeatable
these days), but this scoreline is still surprising .. Rushmi and Emily
Hewson (AUS) got a walkover the in the first round from the 4th seeds
Mayumi Yamomoto and Tomoko Yonemura of Japan .. They play Chin-Wei Chan
and Su-Wei Hsieh of Taipei next.
At the 3rd leg of the Indian satellites,
things went well for Indians today .. Six of them made the QFs
.. The big win was by Sunil Kumar, who upset the 3rd seed Vinod
Sridhar .. SKS was in dire straits with two sub-par legs which
saw him drop from being the top seed to being unranked this week
.. Hope he has got his focus back and will make a big run from now on
to the top of the charts - we really need to see him pick up a lot of
ATP points and he has no margin for error now .. The British contingent
which started with a bang in the first week seems to have totally
lost steam .. The top seed Joshua Goodall gave a walkover (ostensibly
due to "heat stroke") to Ravishankar Pathanjali, who has done decently
in these satellites after a good career in the US college circuit
..Second seed Vishal Uppal who had that wonderful run last week with
a title, continues to do well, as he made the QF with a win over a British
qualifier, after his first round win over another Briton, Ross Hutchins
.. Ajay Ramaswami, who had earlier taken out the 7th seed and the first
leg semifinalist, David Brewer (GBR), won today over Rahil Syed to make
the QF .. Wildcard Ashutosh Singh, who had upset the first leg finalist
and 5th seed Richard Irwin of Britain yesterday, continued the Quit-India
movement (:-)) with a win over Luke Campbell .. The other big win today
was by youngster Kamala Kannan who took out the 6th seed Srinath .. Kamala's
consistent show has been one of the nicer developments this time .. Many
of our other youngsters, due to messed up scheduling, missed a great chance
to play these satellite .. The unsung Pakistani, Aqeel Khan has been
a surprise at these satellite; he has made the QF again and is now in
the 5th spot in circuit points .. The scores are at the satellite
3rd leg page .. Alaso check out the circuit
points list where Vishal has tied Goodall at the top ..
Exactly 24 players have had one win at least in the first three
legs and they all qualify for the masters leg, if my calculations
are correct.
Forgot to mention that Leander played with
Jonathan Erlich at the sHertogenbosch ATP last week .. Reached
the semifinal and picked up 75 points with a couple of good
wins, which was good considering that he had a new temporary partner
.. All these points help LP at this point to keep his rank inside
the top-25 .. More importantly, it is nice to know that he continues
to be in good form.
I really should comment on the performance
of our juniors over the last few weeks which has completely
depressed us fans (which became worse this week after hearing
of Sunil Yajaman leaving AITA too) .. I will wait for another time,
I guess ...
June 22 Notes
Sorry again .. Struggling a bit right
now, with my work-horse computer crashing on me yesterday ..
Give me a bit of time to set things up again, and I will be back
with the regular updates in a day or so .. Jay, June 22, 11.45pm CA.
Quick notes: I have updated the 3rd
leg India satellite scores
and the circuit
points list (the Masters field seems to be all set,
if my calculations are correct). The doubles matches for LP-DR
and MB-MM are not on the schedule for wednesday at the Wimbledon
.. All our juniors exited in the first round at the Roehamton grade-1
event (the effect of completely killing the domestic grass circuit
finally showing -- it's an urgent matter to do something about)
.. Shikha Uberoi won the $10K in Fort Worth last week beating sister
Neha in the final .. Megha made QF there as well .. Prakash and Harsh
have made the entry list for the Nottingham (UK) and the Granby (Canada)
challengers following the next week .. One important development
to report, sadly -- Sunil Yajaman, the wonderfully passionate
junior development officer at AITA had to leave his work due to personal
reasons (to be with the family in Bangalore) .. As all the great juniors
we have lately brought out would attest, Indian tennis will miss Sunil
a lot -- hope we will be lucky to find somebody to fill the big shoes
he leaves behind; Please join me in wishing SY the best and thanking
him for the wonderful few years he spent nurturing Indian tennis!
June 20 Note-1
Sorry for still having not restarted the
news updates. Got back from my trip but was busy the
last couple of days doing the 2 hour drive to watch India play
hockey against the USA team the last two days up at Moorpark,
north of LA (two
7-0 wins, not unexpected) .. Wimbledon doubles
for LP-DR and MB-MM this week .. Prakash had one good win at the Wimbledon
qualies but then went down .. Sania and Julie Ditty lost in the Q1 of
doubles qualies at Wimb .. Harsh is off for one more week, training in
New York .. Vishal Uppal won the second week of India satellites beating
Vinod in the final .. More later!
Will have more soon..
.. Previous notes are at
Notes
for the two weeks ending on June 21 ..
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