New Delhi, Bhilai M15, Indore, Mumbai M25 - Oct 31-Nov 27, 2022

[sameerph]

Niki lost in the final 16 46 against top seed Orlov. Orlov has been in great form this week. Still great 4 weeks for Niki. Doubles titles in all 4 weeks and a final, SF and a QF in singles where he lost to players who won titles in this series.

[Atithee]

Ok. Cheap home points have been won. The caravan will move on. I hope the clamoring, glamoring, and fetish of home tournaments will ease now.

P.S. Yes, I’m in a sarcasm mode today in various threads. It’s sickening to not find even a glimmer of hope anywhere in any sport in any part of the world despite the abundance of people and (now) reasonable amount of funding and resources.

Absolutely sick and tired of reading about doubles. No one, I mean NO ONE, really gives a flying “fudge” about doubles except Indian sheeples. Aarghhh.

[jayakris]

I should disagree. I think these futures' points were not cheap We actually had some decent players who showed up from abroad and beat our players, unlike in some of the earlier events. So I think the points earned this time were rather fair. Only very few points were earned by beating other Indians in these 4 events. No more than 2 or 3 ATP points. The rankings our player have reached after 4 weeks (pretty low, below top-600) all seem legit to me. Only Digvijay, Niki and Karan really got any points, and those three are legit at their rankings too.

Also, I am not that down on doubles. It has actually survived (better than I thought 10-15 years ago). No need to compare it with singles. It is just another game, quite different from singles. In fact, I think a lot of singles players below the top-150 are playing it seriously every now and then these days because they can use the singles rankings and can make some extra money whenever they lose singles, so my feeling is that challenger and lower-level doubles has become more difficult than it used to be. Those who make it into top-100 in doubles are typically pretty good and worth watching play doubles.

[jayakris]

Ok. Cheap home points have been won.

You are partly correct. Home points won by others. The foreigners (Crawford, Palin, Bax, Orlov, Masuda, Matsumara and the two low-end Koreans) probably did get cheap points beating some Indians. Should actually check the sorted list of points won by each player, like ATP used to publish those days 20+ years ago with the 4-week satellite circuits.

[jayakris]

I actually added up the points for all the players who made at least one QF in the four events. Here are the ATP points taken by those players from this circuit

Palan (CZE) 42
Crawford (USA) 37
Digvijay (IND) 23
Matsuda (JPN) 21
Orlov (RUS) 16
Niki (IND) 15
Bax (FRA) 8
Yeonseok (KOR) 8
Woobin (KOR) 8
Sid Rawat (IND) 7
Karan Singh (IND) 7
Nishiwaki (JPN) 7
Sid Viswa (IND) 5
Dalwinder (IND) 5
Matsumura (JPN) 4
Vishnu V (IND) 4

Here is the ranking in terms of points per event.

Crawford (USA) 12.33
Palan (CZE) 10.50
Bax (FRA) 8.00
Orlov (UKR) 8.00
Yeonseok (KOR) 8.00
Digvijay (IND) 7.67
Matsuda (JPN) 5.25
Woobin (KOR) 4.00
Niki (IND) 3.75
Sid Rawat (IND) 2.33
Nishiwaki (JPN) 2.33
Karan Singh (IND) 1.67
Sid Viswa (IND) 1.25
Dalwinder (IND) 1.25

I don't think we can make the point that any Indian got cheap points here. No Indian was in the top-5 in points per event. This was fair competition, but maybe you can say that the foreigners took some cheap points beating Indians. But Orlov, Crawford, Palan, Bax and Matsuda were good players from abroad. Also, there was #407 Ben Patael from israel who came for two M25s and left with just one point. There were also seeds like Weber from France, Butulija from Serbia, Atlangeriev from Russia, etc, who hardly made any points. The 19 year old Korean Yunseok Jang who came for one week and picked up 8 pts at Mumbai, beating Karan, Ben and Sid, must be a good player. This was actually a tougher set of events than usual in India, in terms of foreign participation.

[Atithee]

Jay, I think you are interpreting my comment incorrectly. Although I was being sarcastic, the main message I had was that if we can’t get even go on to win titles at home, these points, however cheap or difficult they are, don’t do much to enhance our standards overall. Nor do they give any hope that there will be a breakout player out of this bunch. In other words, our players do collect some points at home, but they are exposed badly when competing outside India.

I’d be interested in your analysis on how many Indian players collected points playing foreigners. My guess is not many.

Hope you understand my anguish and the gist of the message.

Thanks.

[jayakris]

I understand the anguish, Atithee. I am anguished too, that we aren't getting any breakout players who can dominate such a circuit (for years on end now), whatever the standard of these events are. The kind of players who clearly show they have future top-200 in them. But there were a couple of hopeful names that did emerge. 19 year old Karan Singh and 22 year old Digvijay Pratap Singh. Both showed good enough results to improve and reach top-400 levels in 2 to 5 years time. But that is about it.

As for Indians beating foreigners for points, it is actually a normal count. Not worse than we have seen in the past. Karan beating Dominik Palan this week was one good win. Niki beat Matsuda and Weber. Digvijay got a retirement win in an M15 final from Bax, and gave a retirement win to Matsuda in an M25 semi to even it out. Dalwinder beat the second highest ranked player in the circuit, Ben Patael (who was not well, it seems). But Manish on our side was not well and gave cheap upset wins to Nishiwaki and Butulija (whom Siddharth Visawakarma, Vishnu and Ajay Malik upset). So it is all rather a wash.

This was a circuit of fair competition and justifiable points, but the concern remains that no Indian came out like gangbusters to take the events. Yeah, except throwing up one teenager who looks decent (Karan Singh who had no bad losses and a few good wins), it didn't give too much for us to hope for. When a kid taking 7 points in 4 events is what we have to hang our hopes on, I too have to be as anguished as you!