European Challengers 2020

[Sanjay]

Things seem bleak for indian mens tennis. No new great young talent, only one in sight is Nagal. It will be decades before we get another Vijay.

[vparam]

Things seem bleak for indian mens tennis. No new great young talent, only one in sight is Nagal. It will be decades before we get another Vijay.

Yes, it will be unbelievable to have another Vijay, however at this point I'll take another Somdev. Sadly, I don't see anyone cracking the top 100 anytime soon. Nagal has the best chance, but his serve is well below average and needs to improve greatly. He's the same size as Michael Chang if not taller, so there is no reason why he can not have a strong serve.

[Atithee]

Why not another RK? Is RamK that hopeless?

[Rajiv]

Ram loses 4 & 2, frankly expected a better showing against a player whom Ram had far better clay court experience,as the Australian was playing his first match of the year on clay.

On a worrying note for the first time in 3 1/2 years , Ram has fallen below 200 in the live rankings.

[PKBasu]

Things seem bleak for indian mens tennis. No new great young talent, only one in sight is Nagal. It will be decades before we get another Vijay.

We shouldn't be too harsh on ourselves based on the past 2 weeks on clay. Even Vijay never made it past R3 at the French Open. Sumit needs to work on his serve, but even without it he will soon at least be a top-100 player. Yuki, if he can get fit for a 9 month period, could yet make it to near about 50 in the rankings. But yes, we aren't anywhere near producing another Vijay or Ramesh yet.

[vparam]

Why not another RK? Is RamK that hopeless?

You do realize RamK has never won a tournament higher than a Futures level? I am sure we are all hoping for better from our current crop of players. As I said before, no chance we have another Ramesh or Vijay, but I will be more than happy if Sumit, Prajnesh, RamK or even Yuki turns out to be another Somdev. I think we should set our expectations to be somewhat attainable and realistic.

[Atithee]

Well, I am not quite a PKB but the effect does rub off. Does that count for anything?

[Sin Hombre]

Sumit can get to Somdev level if he stays focused on tennis.

Yuki could have if his body wasn't made of glass.

RamK has done very well to get to the top 150.

Both Yuki and Prajnesh have a career high in the top 100. How many Indians have achieved that in the past 30 years?

[rajitghosh]

Both Yuki and Prajnesh have a career high in the top 100. How many Indians have achieved that in the past 30 years?

Since Ramesh, only 4. Out of them one is a legend, probably the only singles player who has a positive record against both Sampras and Federer and never lost to them.

[Sanjay]

What is worrisome is that we have hardly any bench strength. Only 3 guys and they are all 100-200. PG seems to be on his way out as he is over 30. RR was in the top 100 but seems to have lost motivation and has not made any improvement. If he can't do it at this age, it only gets harder. SN needs more focus, else he may become like Hardik Pandya and get side-tracked with the 'perks' of being famous. He needs to be winning the lower level ATPs by now, not just as few matches, if he wants to get into the VA/RK league.
On the women's side, there has been no one after Sania.

I think we probably need a national academy of some sort in the major cities which can train promising players and sponsor them. We don't have the infra to make it a nation wide sport.

[RohitG]

RR didn't make it to top-100. His CH is 111 and he hasn't played main draw of GS singles till date. His best run was to reach the finals of Newport, can count beating Thiem in Antalya as another achievement. He also had a good run with Purav winning multiple tournaments. He has what Sumit lacks, a good serve (can crank it up even on his second)
This year is an anomaly. Ram got the worst from it, no grass season, no match practice due to the lockdown. Praj got lucky with the restructuring of the points system and kept him in the top-150 by retaining his points from 2019.

Sumit did what Praj, Yuki didn't do in the slams. Win the round when you meet an unseeded player. Yuki losing to Murray and Berdych was not unexpected but the closest he came to winning was when he won a set against Fabbiano at Wimbledon. Praj too had higher ranked opponents in Raonic, Tiafoe, Medvedev.. but arguably his best chance was against Ito at AO this year. Coincidentally Yuki and Praj both had good runs in March, April (deep runs in the challengers and IW+Miami) Unfortunately both had some injury/niggle by the time they were ready for that next step.
Sumit is still yet to break into the top-100, yet to play AO, French and Wimbledon main draws. He took this year's US Open opportunity of direct entry with both hands and made the most of it. In a normal year, he would have had to grind three wins to make it to the main draw. What Sumit did do right was basing himself in Germany and get some match practice through those exhibition matches + Prague challenger.

Even if you can have someone reach Somdev level, is still a great achievement. Career High of 62, 5 good years on tour, reaching R2 on multiple occasions.. and also on National Duty (Asian, CWG golds, Davis Cup exploits, Olympic participation) Also his style of play was exceptional for an Indian athlete. Relying on fitness to beat the opponents in a sport dominated by Europeans and Americans.

[sameerph]

I agree. I think we should anyone from current lot reaching Ramesh,Vijay levels. Reaching Somdev level will be good. Sumit can achieve that 2-3 years later, i think if he keeps his focus. Yuki, if he stays fully fit for 2-3 years can achive that. I am not sure if Prajnesh can reach that level, age is catching up ( as it already has with Saketh who had also shown that promise ). Not sure if RamK has the allround game to reach that level, his ground and return game does not appear to be top 100 level.

On the other hand, at least now we are discussing 4-5 players who are clear top 150 level which we did not have for a long time in the intervening period. So, we should be happy about that for now and wait for our next RK or VA to emerge .

[Atithee]

But who are the next 150-200 players after the current crop? No signs of one?

[jayakris]

We were already uncertain about who will come up later to replace Yuki, Prajnesh, Ramkumar.... Now, after losing this year to the pandemic, we are even more uncertain ... Sumit will be there for a while, though his top-end may be limited to below top-75 or top-100... Who else, 3 to 5 years from now?... No idea.

[Sanjay]

We were already uncertain about who will come up later to replace Yuki, Prajnesh, Ramkumar.... Now, after losing this year to the pandemic, we are even more uncertain ... Sumit will be there for a while, though his top-end may be limited to below top-75 or top-100... Who else, 3 to 5 years from now?... No idea.

Hello JayKris, good to see you again, you may not know me but I used to be a regular visitor to your india tennis update back in 1999! 20 years ago. Those were invaluable back then when there were no other sources.

I am not convinced that Sumit can go beyond 75 like you say. He needs to be focused and keep all the distractions away and Indians usually fail on that when they get some fame and money. RR just crossed out of 200 and he is young enough so I don't know what the issue is. Yuki seems to be done. No one else on the horizon. Sad state.
Looking at where we are today, it is mindboggling to go back and look at Vijay's achievements in the 70s. He played the best of the best and beat them too. If he had some extras like fitness/nutrition/coach etc and most importantly LUCK, he would have won some GSs.