Indian tennis player rankings

[sameerph]

2 ATP titles for pair of Bops and RamK and one more ATP title for Bops with Middlekoop. 7 challenger titles for pair of Saketh and Yuki and 1 more challenger title for Saketh with RamK, 2 challenger titles for pair of Jeevan and Balaji, 2 challenger titles for pair of Divij and Purav, 2 challenger titles for Arjun with foreign partneres. So, all 9 who are in top 150 titles have won quite a bit at challenger level this year and Bops at ATP level.

[Atithee]

Thanks for the summary and congrats to all the players.

[Rajiv]

All these dbls Y22 achieviements 95% of them have forgotten already, so are the dbls GS wins of LP/MB which I don't even remember

But what I remember vividly is Digvijay Singh run in Vietnam, Nikki Poonaacha win over 16 seed Rosol at Bangalore, or in 84 , Seiko Masters in Tokyo where Vijay & Ramesh playing Lendl & Wilander at same time on adjoining courts the QF's and lost them closely are the matches along with numerous singles exploits of our guys that I still remember.

[sameerph]

These are our top 10 ATP singles rankings as of year ending 2022-

340 Sasi Kumar Mukund (420) (300)
348 Gunneswaran, Prajnesh (216) (129)
434 Ramkumar Ramanathan (185) (190)
502 Sumit Nagal (220) (136)
551 Yuki Bhambri (NR)
554 Digvijay Pratap Singh (1401) (1915)
588 Siddharth Rawat (559) (460)
598 Arjun Kadhe (775) (659)
662 Manish Sureshkumar (675) (657)
729 Niki Kaliyanda Poonacha (742) (836)

Last 2 years year ending rankings are in brackets. Prajnesh, RamK and Sumit had a steep fall in last 2 years . Can they recover this year from that ? Mukund is also somewhat down if you compare to his top 300 ranking 2 years back.
Down below the only one who we can say who has emerged this year is Digvijay Pratap Singh. Hope he can progess on this year to become a challenger level player.
Rest all are almost at same level as 2 years back and some have regressed from levels before that.

[PKBasu]

It has been a depressing year in singles for us. Hopefully Maharashtra Open followed by the 3 Challenger100s in India will improve things dramatically for our singles hopefuls (particularly Sumit, although none are on his favourite clay courts).

I don't think we should denigrate or devalue our doubles achievements. In badminton, we always regretted the lack of doubles achievements, why downplay the one thing we do well in tennis -- play doubles?!

[rajitghosh]

I don't think anybody intends to denigrate doubles. Everyone is ruing the fact that doubles success is coming at the cost of singles. The singles achievements of Leander and Sania are ones to be proud of but we have had very limited singles success outside of them (maybe Som).

[sameerph]

A couple of differences in relation to comparison with Badminton. In badminton, we already have lots of singles players who are very good and we are at much lower level in doubles, so we want to more quality doubles players. Also somehow in badminton doubles is valued more than tennis. Maybe shorter matches one after another means everyone who has come to watch singles matches watches the doubles matches. Whatever it is if we take a percentage as such in badminton almost 70% of those who watch singles also watch doubles while in tennis the numbers would be less than 20%. That is why the feeling among many that doubles achievements are not really worth it.

[Sin Hombre]

This is such a poor and false equivalence.

Badminton is an Olympic sport (ie Olympics are the pinnacle), singles skills doesn't translate into doubles and doubles prize money is not a quarter of the singles (it is actually more but split between two obviously).

Doubles in tennis is for players who have failed in singles and a way to still earn a living (nothing wrong with that). And it is pretty obvious that the top singles players can very comfortably play well in doubles.

[Omkara]

Another interesting insight on this comparison. Not many countries play badminton. Almost everyone plays tennis.

Tennis is way for competitive. Probably one of the most competitive sports just after football. Golf is the other name that comes to my mind. Rest of all competitive sports are Olympic sports. A few disciplines in Olympic sports may turn out more competitive than football tennis or golf. But that is a mere speculation.

Just to clarify when I say competitive, I mean more countries play it. So if you Hussain bolt is world's fastest, maybe he is indeed faster unless someone from Papua New Guinea comes and beats him.

[sameerph]

New ITF junior rankings came out with 2004 guys taken out. In new rankings, we have 3 players in top 50 in boys and 1 girls (Shruti) near top 60.

These are top 10 rankings in juniors-

Boys ( birth year in bracket)

40 Aryan Shah (2005)
43 Manas Dhamne (2007)
47 Yuvan Nandal (2005)
134 Kriish Tyagi (2007)
180 Daksh Prasad (2005)
186 Bushan Haobam (2006)
201 Rushil Khosla (2006)
203 Rethin Pranav (2007)
275 Pranav Karthik (2005)
331 Hitesh Chauhan (2007)

Good that there are 4 players born 2007 in this list who have 3 more years left in juniors ( including this one) and 2 from 2006 batch who have 2 years left.

Girls ( birth year in bracket)

63 Shruti Ahlawat (2006)
141 Suhitha Maruri (2005)
248 Sonal Patil (2005)
277 Madhurima Sawant (2005)
291 Tejaswi Dabas (2008)
375 Rishitha Reddy Basireddy (2008)
381 Arunkumar Laxmi Prabha (2005)
468 Ika Raju Kanumuri (2007)
496 Lakshmi Gowda (2005)
499 Tamanna Takoria (2006)

Less encouraging in girls with top 10 going upto rank of around 500 and many of them are in their last year of juniors.

[prashanthm]

7 out of the top-13 Indian men's doubles players are at a career high in live rankings...

I hope Anirudh, VSP can make the jump this year to win more Challenger titles... and Niki/Rithvik can win more matches and feature regularly on the Challenger tour this year..

It's interesting that Rithvik (22) and Anirudh (24) are focusing on doubles at such a young age, I hope it pays off for them some day...

[PKBasu]

Top Indian doubles players in the live ATP rankings:

1. Rohan Bopanna #12
2. Yuki Bhambri #74 (CH)
3. Saketh Myneni #75
4. Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan #83
5. N Sriram Balaji #88 (CH)
6. Arjun Kadhe #122 (CH)
7. Ramkumar Ramanathan #135
8. Anirudh Chandrasekar #137 (CH)
9. Divij Sharan #140
10. Purav Raja #155
11. Vijay Sundar Prashanth #158 (CH)
12. Niki Kalyandi Poonacha #277 (CH)
13. Rithvik Choudary Bollipalli #284 (CH)
14. Parikshit Somany #349 (CH)
15. Manish Sureshkumar #446 (CH)

So 9 of the top 15 are at their career high rankings. After tomorrow's final in the Spain Challenger, there will be another Indian in the top-150 -- Purav will be 148 if DiPu win, VSP will be 150 if he and Anirudh win.

[PKBasu]

The list of Indians in the top-450 of singles is depressingly short:

1. Sumit Nagal #371
2. Sasikumar Mukund #387
3. Ramkumar Ramanathan #413
4. Prajnesh Gunneswaran #438
5. Digvijay Pratap Singh #594
6. Niki Kalyandi Poonacha #676
7. Sidharth Rawat #730
8. Manish Sureshkumar #761
9. SD Prajwal Dev #763
10. Yuki Bhambri #786
11. Karan Singh #852 (CH)
12. Siddharth Vishwakarma #939 (CH)
13. Nitin Kumar Sinha #954
14. Rishab Agarwal #988

Sumit and Prajnesh should have been pragmatic, and played the two M25s in India. If Donskoy played them, I don't see why these two didn't.

[Omkara]

Prajnesh as we heard is injured. Sumit is planning for his clay season.

[sameerph]

Updating top 10 WTA players after a long time since we have 3 of our top 5 player at career high rankings this year.

209 Ankita Raina
263 Karman Kaur Thandi
313 Rutuja Bhosale (CH)
380 Sahaja Yamlapalli (CH)
436 Vaidehi Chaudhary (CH)
656 Zeel Desai
719 Riya Bhatia
744 Sowjanya Bavisetti
746 Shrivalli Bhamidipatti
773 Jennifer Luikham

So, our #3, 4 and 5 are all their career high rankings. Hope they and Ankita/Karman keep rising. Can we hope for 5 players in top 300 anytime soon ?

Sahaja is 21, Vaidehi 23 and Karman 24, still quite a few years where they can shine on pro tour. Others who are younger ones and promising are 21 year olds Shrivalli and Tanisha Kashyap, 20 year olds Sandipti Singh Rao and Smriti Bhasin and 18 year old Vaishnavi Adkar. Hope some among these 5 can make their way up towards top 300 too in next couple of years.