Grass court tournaments 2022 (Challengers & ATP)

[Rajiv]

This is a good break for Ram to get things in order against an opponent who is not in his best form.
Although the Japanese leads 2-1 h2h, importantly Ram's win came on Grass at Newport, so hopefully a repeat of that win at Surbiton to set his game in the right direction.

[Sin Hombre]

I suspect Sugita is also looking at this as his chance to get his first win of the year.

Go Ramk!

Sugita will likely get his first win then .

[PKBasu]

I'm betting on Ramkumar getting his grass-court season off to a great start with a main draw win. Go RamK!

The winner will play either 8-Jordan Thompson or LL-Marius Copil in R2.

[prashanthm]

[R1] (LL) Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND,175) vs. (PR) Yuichi Sugita (JPN,270) 46 75 43

Ouch! lost the first set 4-6. RamK had to face the first breakpoint of the match while serving 4-5 and promptly lost it to seal the first set for Sugita!

RamK was a down a break, broke back and got another break to win the second set 7-5...

Saved multiple breakpoints in the decider to stay on server... 1-1
RamK up a break in the decider now... 4-3 (unfortunately no live stream on ATP challenger TV for this match...)

[sameerph]

RamK had 2 matchpoints on Sugita serve at 5-3 in third set, he could not covert, then got broken serving from 5-4, 30-0. But, thankfully held at 5-6 and then easily won the tiebreak.

At Surbitron Challenger 125,Greast Britain

[R1] (LL) Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND,175) d. (PR) Yuichi Sugita (JPN,270) 46 75 76(2)

[Rajiv]

Phew.. Ram survives and scores a 3 set close win, looked down and out a set and a break down,and fought valiantly to close out the match.
Still too early to say if he has found his mojo, the way he almost made a hash of an easy opponent,  considering he (opponent ) has played very little and with not much success.
Coming matches will determine his true form.

[prashanthm]

Luck seems to be in favor of RamK this week - first with the LL spot and getting through his R1.... hopefully a week to remember...

[Rajiv]

Won't be lucky next like today playing a PR quality player, as in all likelihood it will be a tough opponent , the 8th seed Jordan Thompson who is a set up and the way he struggled against a out of form player, winning against the 8th seed will be very difficult, And I hope I am wrong on this.

[PKBasu]

Terrific come-from-behind win for Ramkumar today, over a very good grass court player. Sugita won the Antalya ATP tour title on grass in 2017 -- Antalya also being the scene of Ramkumar's most famous win, over that year's FO finalist Dominic Thiem. Sugita made R2 at Wimbledon and the USO in 2017, and at the AO in 2018 (repeating that last year), and was ranked as high as 36 as a result in October 2017. In 2018, Sugita beat Thiem at Halle to make the QF there. Ramkumar surely can fashion a magical year like that one soon -- why not this year??! Let us hope this is the start of a magical turnaround in his fortunes.

Sugita was up 6-4, 4-2, but Ramkumar came roaring back to make it 4-4, and finally broke again to take the set 7-5. He was a break ahead, and had 2 match-points on Sugita's serve at 5-3 in the final set but couldn't convert. Then, serving for the match at 5-4, he was up 30-0, but let Sugita get back to 30-all, served a couple of double faults and gave back the break. But he put the memory of that out of his mind in the tie-break, easily winning it 7-2. Lovely victory indeed!

[Rajiv]

Ram loses S1 to Jordan @5 , was playing well, staving BP"s and serving with ferocity that he even broke the streaming camera with his booming serve and with that now the live stream is off. And that is what is the annoying part, was 40-15 up when he broke the camera but still went on to lose the game and the set at the most crucial moment inspite being 40-15 up.
Hope he can mount a comeback.

[Rajiv]

And they haven't yet been able to fix the broken camera and the stream is still off, and so does Ram who cannot fix his game in set2 and is quickly down 1-4 , and dreadfully got broken in S2 when again 40-15 up.

[Rajiv]

So all over and a straight sets loss @5 & 3, but not a worrying result as Ram was playing a much higher ranked and a better opponent , but the worrying part is that,now he has to protect 129 points in the next 5 weeks , which is an average of 25 points per tournament , in the past 2 years had that cushion of hybrid covid rankings so could hover and continuously stay near or above 200 , but now only single remaining 2019 points is of Newport which will drop in coming weeks along with last year points , so there will be a big drop in his ranking if he cannot protect those 129 points and that is the worrying bit.

[vparam]

Off topic here, but when does the ATP revert back to the trailing 52 weeks ranking? The women have done this for a while now.

[sameerph]

Off topic here, but when does the ATP revert back to the trailing 52 weeks ranking? The women have done this for a while now.

ATP still has 50% of some of the points earned in 2019 in their rankings. But, they are dropping off gradually and by 5th August, 2021 all the 2019 points will drop off and they will revert back fully to 52 weeks rankings.

[prashanthm]

Didn't watch the match, but RamK was not so lucky today in his Singles match.... He was lucky with doubles thought as they got a w/o in R1... They are scheduled to play their Doubles QF match later in the day...