American hardcourt Challengers 2017

[jaydeep]

Agree, Yuki needs to improve his stamina but lacking power in his serve and shots are solely depended upon his recovery of the elbow.

[PKBasu]

I don't think Yuki lacks power in his ground-strokes or his service return. The elbow perhaps makes him slightly tentative, but he doesn't lack power in his groundies. The service is a longer-term problem, which I don't think is necessarily that related to his elbow. In the match against Quiroz, it was not the power but the reliability (direction/consistency) of his groundstrokes that was the bigger problem in the first set and a half.

[arjun2761]

Agree that Yuki should really work on his cardio fitness as he takes breaks to rest his elbow. Although at a different level, Andy Murray really went up in the rankings once he upped his cardio fitness at an early stage in his career.

Yuki's court craft and his groundies is pretty effective if he can stick a little longer with the rallies rather than often go for too much and make unnecessary errors. Agree with PKB that his serve didn't have much power even prior to his elbow injury, so perhaps there isn't much more he can do there as his ball placement is quite good already.

BTW, Shapovalov is probably playing at a pretty high level having now won 7 challenger matches in a row in Canada and having won a challenger there earlier in the year. He also had a strong showing in his last ATP tour event in which he beat #47 Edmond and lost in a close 3 setter to #14 Berdych.

[sameerph]

I saw part of this match. Yuki was placing his serve quite well . However, he does need on an average extra 10mph on his serve when playing against top 100 level players ( like Shapovalov is as of now). I also thought some more power is needed on groundies. As some said, some issue still there with his elbow might be preventing him to add more power to his shots.

[PKBasu]

RamK will be playing the Aptos Challenger this week. Yuki seems to be taking the week off.

[Sin Hombre]

Ram has a tough draw in 3rd seed in Henri Laaksonen.

A win here (even being competitive) will be a real sign of consolidation at this level.

[jaydeep]

RamK and Yuki r top-3 seeds but both r in the bottom draw and they can face each other in the semis ... Prajnesh having winnable first round against Joyce.

At $75K Columbus Challenger 2017, Ohio, USA

[R1] Prajnesh Gunneswaran (IND,227) vs (WC) Martin Joyce (USA,1882)
[R1] (3) Yuki Bhambri (IND,157) vs Jose Hernandez-Fernandez (DOM,341)
[R1] (2) Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND,154) vs Sekou Bangoura (USA,386)

[Sin Hombre]

Prajnesh very lucky with the draw and a chance to win a rare CH level match for him.

[PKBasu]

Yuki is seeded to meet Brayden Schnur (the guy who lost both his singles to us in Davis Cup this past weekend) in the QF. But Schnur must first beat Frank Dancevic (who is in the draw with his protected ranking) in R1 (to justify his own selection for DC ahead of Dancevic).

RamK, despite being second seed, has a tricky R1 against the erratic Bangoura, who beat Gabashvili in Q1 of this year's US Open before losing to Cameron Norrie. He also qualified into the Citi Open this year (and has a career-high ranking of 213 from October last year). But he lost to Hernandez-Fernandez (the guy Yuki meets here) in Colombia last month (on clay). Yuki should be able to handle his R1 opponent, who hasn't played a hard-court tournament since March -- although he won a couple of hard court matches against low-ranked Peruvian opponents in DC play this weekend.

RamK/Prajnesh are also playing doubles together, but run into second seeded British pair, Brydan Klein/Joe Salisbury first up.

[sameerph]

Prajnesh's first round match is on schedule today. It seems RamK and Yuki have been allowed Wednesday start due to their davis cup duties till Sunday.

[Saniapower]

Martin will beat Prajnesh.

[VReddy]

Prajnesh had a dreadful loss today. This was an easy draw in even Indian Futures terms. I couldn't find any real ranking for his opponent in both Juniors and Seniors

[R1] Prajnesh Gunneswaran (IND,227) l (WC) Martin Joyce (USA,1882) 6-7(4) 6-7 (1)

[arjun2761]

Joyce is a junior on the Ohio State Buckeyes team. Haven't checked his collegiate record to see how good he is but he may be better than his ranking.

[Atithee]

Joyce is a junior on the Ohio State Buckeyes team. Haven't checked his collegiate record to see how good he is but he may be better than his ranking.

Aargh!

[PKBasu]

Dreadful is the word! Utterly shameful loss for Prajnesh, to a player who has failed to qualify for Futures in his last two tournaments.