$54K(+H) Chennai Challenger, Feb 4-10, 2019

[sameerph]

Entry list is out for Chennai Challenger this year -

109 Gunneswaran, Prajnesh
145 Sugita, Yuichi
151 Moutet, Corentin
165 Martinez, Pedro
186 Safwat, Mohamed
235 Lee, Duckhee
237 Duckworth, James
238 Kwon, Soonwoo
241 Davidovich Fokina, Alejandro
245 Elias, Gastao
248 Kuhn, Nicola
251 Lopez Perez, Enrique
256 Myneni, Saketh
261 Li, Zhe
263 Aragone, JC
273 Hernandez-Fernandez, Jose
275 Mager, Gianluca
279 Couacaud, Enzo
281 Grigelis, Laurynas
283 Yang, Tsung-Hua
291 Mukund, Sasi Kumar
302 Banes, Maverick
308 Wu, Yibing
309 Altamarino, Collin
319 Mousley, Bradley
320 0jeda Lara, Ricardo
323 Ortega-Olmedo, Roberto
324 Fanselow, Sebastian
324PR Altmaier, Denis
331 Barrios Vera, Marcelo Tomas
334 Statham, Rubin
336 Pellegrino, Andrea
339 Tokuda, Renta
339PR Nguyen, Daniel
340 Zekic, Miljan
341 Boluda-Purkiss, Carlos
ITF 1- David Perez Sans
ITF 13- Ivan Nedelko
ITF 22- Moses Echargui
ITF 25- Evegenii Tuirnev
Special Exempt -1
Wild cards- 5
Qualfiers - 2

So, 3 Indians in the main draw entry list- Prajnesh,Saketh and Mukund. Sumit Nagal is 4 out from main draw based on his ATP ranking.

No sign of Yuki still. He will lose further in rankings as he was the runner up here last year.

Surprisingly, RamK is skipping this home tournament and has entered the same level Budapest Challenger in this week and will be top seed there.

[Sin Hombre]

Sad to see just 3 Indians in the MD of a home challenger with the bigger draws.

[RohitG]

No statement from Yuki either on when he plans to start or whether he's targeting the PR route or what's the state of his injury. Weird decision by RamK to play at Budapest.

[vparam]

No statement from Yuki either on when he plans to start or whether he's targeting the PR route or what's the state of his injury. Weird decision by RamK to play at Budapest.

Trying to figure out the schedules for our players is more baffling than knowing when the US Gov't shutdown will end!

[sameerph]

Sad to see just 3 Indians in the MD of a home challenger with the bigger draws.

True. Hopefully, Sumit will get in eventually and with 5 wild cards now, total players in main draw may go upto 9. Will be lucky to get 1-2 more thru qualifers as there are only 2 qualifying spots now in a draw of just 4. So, it will be somewhere between 8-10 for us. Still, not good enough as we got 13 players in a draw of 32 last year at the same challenger.

[prasen9]

5 wildcards is too much where you have only two qualifiers. I would have 1 wildcard and six qualifiers.

[sameerph]

Wild cards are important to fast track bright young talents to challenger and ATP level. It becomes more important now in the changed dual ranking system as there are no more ATP points awarded for futures ( except a few at $25K ones). So, only way those playing futures level can start playing challengers is thru 4 ITF spots awarded at challengers, wild cards and qualifiers. So, fair enough that the qualifiers have been increased from 4 to 5.

Reducing qualifiers from 4 to 2 and more importantly, reducing the qualifying draw from 32 to 4 is a very strange decision by ATP. Now,for players outside the outside the original entry list, difficult to plan travel to the far away location not knowing whether they are getting in. Earlier at least there was some certainty that they would be able to get in the qualifiers in a bigger qualifying draw. Now, I guess the qualifying draw of 4 will mostly consist of local players.

I guess the only reason can be that ATP wants to weed out those players travelling to challengers, losing in qualies, not earning anything and eventually going out of the game after trying for a few years. Now, the transition to challengers can either be quicker or the not so good ones will not be able to transition at all.

[prasen9]

Sorry, I disagree a bit. Wildcards are not the right way to reward juniors or prospective future players. If you want to do that, save 2-3 spots for people who have the best U-23 ranking, say. Or the most improved player in the last year or two. In this age of computers, we can create and maintain a lot of such lists. I think wildcards just increase nepotism by the local organizers. Now, there is something to be said to have some local interest to bring in spectators. But, i think two is enough. Do people care if five challenger level players from India are going to show up? It is used to wheel and deal between organizations, bribe future players, etc. I don't like that. You already have 4 ITF ranked players, right?

And, why stop at 48? I would rather have 64 players playing if they can afford it. I suppose that would have caused monetary problems. I think the 32 draw players got increased to 48. So, you can think of that as giving a bunch of qualifiers direct entry. This is in the right direction. I would want it to be 64 if/when possible.

If you really want players not to travel without getting paid, do away with qualifiers. But, if players are able to find the money somewhere, why not let them? I mean you try to get hospitality for everyone and increase prize money to the extent you can and then have the players come using their own money if they can.

As much as possible, I would just not reserve any of the 48/64 slots. Except for the ITF rankers. But even there, I would use other criteria than just ranking. I would give a few to the best juniors (find out the right age). And, I would give some to up and coming players irrespective of age. I would try to discourage the regular trundler just outside the top whatever to get a direct entry/ATP ranking.

So, there are no SEs these days?

Also, these discussions are not related to the challenger. So that we can find these in the future, may I request a moderator to move it to a general tennis thread? Thanks in advance.

[sameerph]

Sorry, I disagree a bit. Wildcards are not the right way to reward juniors or prospective future players. If you want to do that, save 2-3 spots for people who have the best U-23 ranking, say. Or the most improved player in the last year or two. In this age of computers, we can create and maintain a lot of such lists. I think wildcards just increase nepotism by the local organizers. Now, there is something to be said to have some local interest to bring in spectators. But, i think two is enough. Do people care if five challenger level players from India are going to show up? It is used to wheel and deal between organizations, bribe future players, etc. I don't like that. You already have 4 ITF ranked players, right?

It is not really anything to do with local interest to bring in spectators. Nobody really goes to watch challengers even if there are a lot of local players and in most cases the entry is free. But, in most cases local tennis associations organise these challengers so that local players benefit.At challenger level, local players tend to do much better than do otherwise. If there are no wild cards, associations will feel discouraged to organise challengers.

Also consider the case of likes of Somdev who came from college scene and who were top 200 level players when they started to play on pro tour. For such players it will be a long road if they had to go thru futures tour. With wild cards at challengers it becomes much easier.

[prasen9]

I support giving local organizers 1-2 spots. But, really is 5 optimal. It is worth trying. Let the ATP try to reduce the number of wildcards to 2 or three and see if people do not want to organize. Because the qualifying is now for 4 people, chances are that these are going to be within local players. If you want, you can allow a certain boost to local players rankings. For example, if there is a local player within 50 ranks of the last four entries, you can allow the organization to allow choosing the local player to give them a local boost recognizing that home cooking improves performance. Or whatever that 50 should be.

[sameerph]

There are 5-6 withdrawals from Chennai challenger now and Sumit Nagal is now in the main draw to join Prajnesh, Saketh and Mukund. Arjun Kadhe would also be a few spots away mostly.

[bujilover]

Arjun is training at the Alexander-Waske Tennis-University (that explains why he opted to play that one $25K ITF in Germany last week).

[bujilover]

Arjun made the main draw and the cut-off is now at 397. I assume Balaji could be the next Indian player to get in but I am not sure if he is coming home or staying in the US to continue the rest of the US challengers. Looks like a distant shot for the rest of the Indians - Sid Rawat, Abhinav Sanjeev, Manish to get in.

[sameerph]

So, at least 5 Indians in the main draw now. Hope one of Bala/Sid also make it. Then, they can give 5 wild cards to the youngsters Manish, Abhinav etc. to make it 10-11 Indians in the main draw eventually.

[jaydeep]

Our 3 players r seeded; Prajnesh, Saki and Mukund ... Sumit is facing current ITF #1 David Perez Sanz and Arjun also having a tough match against current ITF top-15 Nedelko ... In the doubles, only Arjun and Saki r the seeded Indian pair.

At $54K+H Chennai Challenger 2019, India

[Q1] (WC) Dhakshineswar Suresh (IND,UNR) vs (1) Ivan Gakhov (RUS,ITF-20)
[Q1] (2) Sidharth Rawat (IND,443) vs Alexander Zhurbin (RUS,ITF-27)

[R1] (1) Prajnesh Gunneswaran (IND,102) bye
[R1] Arjun Kadhe (IND,390) vs Ivan Nedelko (RUS,ITF-14)
[R1] (WC) Siddharth Vishwakarma (IND,ITF-1021) vs Blake Ellis (AUS,353)
[R1] (11) Saketh Myneni (IND,260) bye
[R1] (WC) N. Vijay Sundar Prashanth (IND,ITF-374) vs Carlos Boluda-Purkiss (ESP,341)
[R1] (WC) Abhinav Sanjeev Shanmugam (IND,509) vs Renta Tokuda (JPN,342)
[R1] (WC) Manish Sureshkumar (IND,584) vs Brydan Klein (GBR,396)
[R1] (16) Sasi Kumar Mukund (IND,292) bye
[R1] Sumit Nagal (IND,349) vs David Perez Sanz (ESP,ITF-1)

Doubles
[R1] (WC) Sidharth Rawat (IND)/ Manish Sureshkumar (IND) vs (WC) Anirudh Chandrasekar (IND)/ Abhinav Sanjeev Shanmugam (IND)
[R1] N. Vijay Sundar Prashanth (IND)/ Rubin Statham (NZL) vs Brydan Klein (GBR)/ Toshihide Matsui (JPN)
[R1] (3) Arjun Kadhe (IND)/ Saketh Myneni (IND) vs Glanluca Mager (ITA)/ Andrea Pellegrino (ITA)
[R1] (WC) Nam Hoang Ly (VIE)/ Sumit Nagal (IND) vs (ITF) Ivan Nedelko (RUS)/ Alexander Zhurbin (RUS)