Australian Open 2018

[PKBasu]

Yuki should continue to play high-level Challengers until he can add some sizzle to his serve. At the ATP level, he will struggle because of that serve.

Today, he also played conservatively (expecting to win), rather than aggressively (like he did against Monfils). At the ATP level, he has to be aggressive, aiming to finish points early and come to the net more often (but his volley needs to be more solid than it was today).

[sameerph]

As you said before, Yuki's game has pretty much stagnated in last 3 years since he played his first Australian open main draw and the main reason in stagnation is his serve which probably is worse than 3 years back. With this game. he will remain at his current ranking level, can occasionally go inside top 100 but not much higher. Needs some improvement in that area soon.

[Rajiv]

Playing against an experienced veteran of the tour was never going to be easy. Bagdhatis an excellent returner of the serve relished on Yuki weak serves and broke him at crucial times.
The turning point he let go the early advantage he had in the opening set, had he capitalised we would have generally seen the match going to 4th - 5th set. But instead his game just fell apart and an avalanche of UFe's followed.Melbourne has a significant Greek - Cypriot population and crowd support is also very infectious .

[nitin28]

I think Yuki's priority right now is to remain injury free for rest of his career. I read in his latest interview where he mentioned that he is not working on his serve. May be once he assure himelf about his body he may start working on other aspects of his game.

[VReddy]

Agree with Nitin. It depends on the expectation that we have on Yuki. There are a lot of Jr WR#1 who have not even made it beyond ranking 150 as a pro (I wish there were stats around this somewhere or someone with access to that db). Given that he has not even equipment/apparel sponsor + limited/no follower support (in terms crowd funding) + fragile body, I think he has made a good career of his limited resources. He is for the second time, at the cusp of building on his hard work (of reaching close to #100 ranking).

As Yuki himself outlined, assuming he stays injury-free, hopefully he will achieve the following

- Highest priority: Ensure he reaches top-104 ranking to get in MD direcly of Grand Slams
- Play mostly ATP Qualies or the highest end Challengers in this year and hopefully only ATP 250s or higher from next year
- Over the next 3-5 years: Consistently reach R2 of Grand Slams (~50% of time) with occasional foray into R3 (and hopefully once out of say the next 15-20 Grand Slam events, he runs into rich vein of form + luck with draw to reach R4 but extremely low probability)
- Win 2-4 medals in the Asian + Commonwealth Games
- Have a crack once at the Olympic Games doubles QF appearance with Divij or someone else (if we get lucky with a top-10 doubles player to garuntee a spot)
- Few ATP 250 semis appearances (if lucky, a final) but hopefully mostly competitive record with 45-55% (or higher) win-loss ratio on the tour

Ofcourse if he has another major injury, then we are looking at a repeat of challenger grind -> get to cusp of ATP Tour stage -> Transition to doubles as a priority.

If he achieves the former (or most of it), then I feel it would be pretty successful career given the circumstances. Ofcourse I usually take the optimistic approach here given the state of affairs with Indian Tennis in general. Hope he achieves the next goal of cementing a spot in GS MD direclty with the French Open itself.

[Omkara]

I agree his first aim is to get maim draw of Roland Gaross. It's good money.

The number of points he has to defend till the French open its quite less. If he remains fit, he can definitely make it in the main draw

[knarayen]

I agree his first aim is to get maim draw of Roland Gaross. It's good money.

The number of points he has to defend till the French open its quite less. If he remains fit, he can definitely make it in the main draw

Agreed - time to move on. I didn't get to see the match - it started late at night here in the US. Going by the comments it looks like a bad day at the office overall for yuki.

Onward to better things!, Yuki' time will come, as will RamK!

Prof

[PKBasu]

The immediate goal of making it into the main draw of the French Open and Wimbledon should be relatively easy, as Yuki doesn't have that many points to defend. He needs to stay fit and healthy, and start concentrating on the high-level Challengers and the occasional ATP250, plus an occasional bigger tournament like Key Biscayne. The weakness of the serve is now a really big problem, although his service return is totally ATP-worthy (and the second-serve is reasonably good too). I was surprised that his volleying was quite inconsistent today; he needs to be able to rely on it more.

[sameerph]

He has about 95 points to defend from now till mid April which will be the cut off date for French open main draw. After this week's points are updated, Yuki will be still about 40 points away from 102-103 ranking which can get him into slam main draws. So, overall he needs to earn about 135-140 points till mid April to make it to French open main draw. Settable but not really easy. He will need at least 1-2 big point tournaments.

Agree with Nitin. It depends on the expectation that we have on Yuki. There are a lot of Jr WR#1 who have not even made it beyond ranking 150 as a pro (I wish there were stats around this somewhere or someone with access to that db).

I had done that analysis a few years back based on top 2 year end ITF juniors rankings for 8-10 years and their respective career high ATP rankings and put somewhere here. Will try to find out where I put it and update here.

[Atithee]

Here is an older discussion. Lots of analysis. In the wrong thread though; there was a request by Prasen at that time to move the items and it may be time to do so now. Sameer, when you find your analysis, please consider consolidating the various analyses so it is easily accessible,

viewtopic.php?t=215585&start=45

[sameerph]

Thank a lot, Atithee. My analysis is also on the same thread on page 2. That is for played ranked in top 2 from 1998 to 2011. Will update it later till 2017 and post it in Yuki's thread or open a new thread and put that other analysis too there.

[jai_in_canada]

What???!! No Yuki-RamK finals at the Oz Open 2018???!! And they say optimists live longer!! I'm not so sure anymore! This is hard on my heart!!!

[arjun2761]

Yuki should continue to play high-level Challengers until he can add some sizzle to his serve. At the ATP level, he will struggle because of that serve.

Today, he also played conservatively (expecting to win), rather than aggressively (like he did against Monfils). At the ATP level, he has to be aggressive, aiming to finish points early and come to the net more often (but his volley needs to be more solid than it was today).

That is a very risky strategy at the ATP level as most players have really strong groundies and feast on folks at the net. Perhaps, that is the only choice he has but I would not expect it to succeed the majority of the time.

The success in Washington was based on it being a very fast court (sort of like a grass court but with even bounce). The Aus Open surface does not look anywhere as fast and he would have been easily passed at the net by a decent shot maker like Baghdatis (and most ATP level players in the top 100). Going to the net can be a regular but occasional strategy but is not something that will help him win consistently at the top 100 level. In the last two sets, Yuki did try to hit for the lines and a lot of his unforced errors were misses really close to the lines (generally 2-3 inches out).

If he isn't going to work on his serves (or his injury risk prevents him from doing so), his only other option is to be able to able to win more consistently from the back court by prolonging rallies and hitting the lines (instead of missing them) but that is easier said than done.

[sameerph]

In an article, Yuki mentioned that he struggled with the wind while serving and missed closing out the first set due to that and not due to nerves.

In the hindsight, Marcos was a much better player in the match. In the first set, Yuki was the better player but as the match progressed Marcos improved his serving and was hardly missing anything. So, it would not have been easy for Yuki even if he had won the first set.

[PKBasu]

All the breaks in the first set were because of shambolic handling of the return of serve (i.e., the third shot in his service points). The returns from Marcos were nothing great, but were landing deep in his court -- and Yuki would shank the return instead of bending low and getting them over the net. That stood out for me as a glaring weakness that can be easily fixed; he was either not concentrating, or simply isn't used to an opponent returning his serve decently. At the ATP level, he needs to be better-prepared to handle this.