AO 2020

[jayakris]

Mukund will now play Yun-Seong Chung (KOR) in the QF. Also, RamK and Arjun play Yuki Mochizuki and Sho Shimabukuro of JPN in the QF to make it to the SF where the top seeds Maoxin Gong/ Ze Zhang (CHN) await.

[jaydeep]

Yes, the draw is open for Mukund after Istomin's loss.

At Australian Open 2020 Asia-Pacific Wildcard Play-off, Zhuhai, China

[R1] (7) Sasikumar Mukund (IND,271) bt (Q) Sidharth Rawat (IND,498) 63 62

[QF] (7) Sasikumar Mukund (IND,271) vs Yunseong Chung (KOR,320)

Doubles
[QF] (3) Arjun Kadhe (IND)/ Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND) vs Yuki Mochizuki (JPN)/ Sho Shimabukuro (JPN)

[Rajiv]

Ram loses 3-6,0-6 , when I saw the draw always knew Zhe Zhang was a tough opponent , but still a one sided loss is very surprising.

All hopes now rest on Mukund who faces the giant killer Y Chung of Korea , although the Korean must be riding high , still have hopes on Mukund to make a match out of it, as both of them have a similar style of play and both of them are quick on the courts.

[RohitG]

Looks like I overestimated Ram. Forgot the season he has had. With Istomin's exit, thought it was Ram's for the taking. Looks like anybody can win it. Ito and Jung still there though

[jaydeep]

Terrible results ... In the doubles also, the seeded Ram and Arjun lost a close match in the long super tie-break against a Japanese pair.

At Australian Open 2020 Asia-Pacific Wildcard Play-off, Zhuhai, China

[R1] (3) Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND,176) l Ze Zhang (CHN,358) 36 06

Doubles
[QF] (3) Arjun Kadhe (IND)/ Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND) l Yuki Mochizuki (JPN)/ Sho Shimabukuro (JPN) 36 63 11-13

[jayakris]

So disappointing to see that loss from RamK. I worry if he got hurt though. I saw the stats for the match, and it showed the maximum consecutive points for each, with Zhang havng a 17. I don't know how RamK would lose 17 points in a row unless he was injured. Only one ace in the match too, which could indicate something even more bothersome. Yikes.... Oh well....

[jayakris]

[QF] (7) Sasikumar Mukund (IND,271) l. Yunseong Chung (KOR,320), 46 36

So, that is that, for that.

[PKBasu]

Terrible Indian performances at this event, as usual (apart from the first year, when Sania made the final, lost to Li Na, but made the AO main draw when Li Na didn't need the wildcard; and of course, Yuki and Michael Venus won the doubles once, and made R3 of the main draw in the end).

[Sin Hombre]

This is why I ignore this tournament.

Every year there is a lot of complaining why player X didn't play here, such a great opportunity to get to the AO main draw.

Never happens, our players always suck at this. Better to have an uninterrupted off-season.

[jayakris]

Tough to disagree with Sin Hombre on that. I'm also reluctant to get too excited about it because our players rarely seem to show much fight or focus at this event. Not too many upsets pulled and often falling victim to upsets. Either go there to fight hard or just do off-season training!

[rajitghosh]

I may be wrong but didn't Leander Mahesh win it once?

[jayakris]

I may be wrong but didn't Leander Mahesh win it once?

I don't think so. From that quick breakout period in 1997 when they won 2 challengers and 2 tour events in a row and reached the top levels of ATP doubles, neither fell out of top-25 (or even top-10) for a very long period till they fully parted ways after some attempts at reuniting, so they never needed wildcards at any grand slams for doubles. Anyway the AO playoff for Asia itself wasn't there those days.

[PKBasu]

No, no, Leander-Mahesh didn't need to play this, ever!
The AO wildcard playoff started only around 2004, and I think the first winner was Li Na (replaced by runner-up Sania Mirza in the main draw). The only other time an Indian has won was Yuki Bhambri-Michael Venus in doubles.
Jeevan made the doubles final in each of the last two years, partnering Rungkat last year and VSP the year before. Purav made the doubles final in 2015 (with a Filipino partner) losing 8-10 in the STB of the final.

[Rajiv]

The Top 3 Indians will be at the pre qualies warm up Challenger in Canberra.
We could discuss their progress in this thread or in the players respective thread once the tournament sets in.

A very strong field with over half a dozen top 100 players in the MD draw and Prajnesh along with Sumit have made the main draw , Ram is 1 out in the alt list , but should make it to the MD once closer to the tournament date.

[sameerph]

The Top 3 Indians will be at the pre qualies warm up Challenger in Canberra.
We could discuss their progress in this thread or in the players respective thread once the tournament sets in.

Or we can open a thread to discuss Canberra Challenger closer to the tournament if top 3 Indians play there and maybe a few doubles specialists too.

In a way it is good for out players that Pune Open is rescheduled. They get 1 extra week in Australia to acclimatize themselves before AO qualies. The lower ranked Indians like Mukund, Saketh etc. who cannot make it to AO qualies will mostly start their 2020 season with couple of Bangkok challengers in the week of Jan 13 and 20.