ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

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jayakris
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by jayakris »

knarayen wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:35 pm Karan has good net skills, from the little I saw. He just doesn’t use them. I can sit with the guy and do a video analysis with him. PKB if you can facilitate that, and be present, that would be great. We can meet at Bopanna’s “The Sports School” in Bangalore. I’m meeting Harsha Thimmaiah next week- he does business development for them. I’m constrained for travel due to my parents condition.
He does have net skills. He did not seem to use it today (I saw only the first set). But in the earlier match, he used it a few more times, and I felt he showed good natural instincts and good hands. Like you said, he seemed to decide to stay back today and not try something more at the net. Must have been a wrong calculation by him. Interestingly in the 4 matches I have seen of him, I saw his styles varying a bit - and it looked somewhat deliberate too, though I don't know for sure if that is the case.

The next week event is in Mysuru. Would be great if you can find a way to check out the new 1 hour freeway to Mysuru :)
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by sameerph »

jayakris wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:46 pm
But I agree with your conclusion that we can probably hope for a top-300 type ceiling for now. Anything more will be great. But generally, I think he does not have much limitations that many of our top guys have had, so if he puts in work and gets some good coaching along the way, who knows! I am going to keep some hopes on the guy, for now. Things look positive.
Yes, anyway we do not have anyone to keep hopes on between 19-25 age group. ( maybe except Digvijay who has been playing well lately).

Till hopefully Yuvan, Ayan and than Rushil, Manas come along.
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by jayakris »

knarayen wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:51 pm He played one bad game at 5-all in the first set and then went downhill from there. He needs some strong in-your-face counseling to boost his mental strength during these critical games - confidence to go into an defence-to-attack at critical points to show the competition he means business. These skills can be taught - there are some great mental conditioning coaches around. Maybe I need to step up and deliver in this area I don’t know. It is energy- consuming work though - I’ve done it before - tires you out - younger guys should be doing this.
Actually, Prof, don't worry. Today's 5-5 game may have been an aberration. He is not bad at crunch time. I saw that in 3 previous matches. In fact he seemed to do very well without choking or getting overexcited. Does particularly well at break points on him, actually. He just missed three points, two into the net and one to the corner in that 5-5 game. Did not seem to be bad shots to hit, but he didn't make them! After that the problem must have been that he was out of ideas on what to do to get back in the game after dropping the first set. I guess he didn't figure out that using his net game was a way to turn it around, like you felt. These are things a coach needs to tell him. Again, it would be good if you can meet him.
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by PKBasu »

These Futures (M25s) have at least thrown one young singles player, Karan Singh, and of course highlighted a couple more doubles pairs. But Mukund and Karan are the major winners (if only Mukund hadn't lost in R1 last week). So they have served a useful purpose.

I agree with Jay that Zeeshan is probably the best among the coaches we have -- certainly much more useful to have him even as Davis Cup captain than the utterly useless Rohit Rajpal. We need to start using the likes of Somdev much more, although I do think Somdev is already involved with helping the India #1 singles player, Sumit Nagal, who himself is still quite young. I'm sure Prof can provide some valuable tips for Karan, so I'll be happy to try and facilitate that (although I know Manish and some other players better, just happened to speak quite briefly to Karan Singh).

All the best to Mukund in the SF! I am not willing to give up on Manish as a singles prospect, but covid was a big setback for him, Digvijay, etc., as well as for an older player like Sid Rawat.
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by sameerph »

Mukund goes down against Donskoy .

[SF] (5) Sasikumar Mukund (IND,401) l. (3) -Evgeny Donskoy (RUS,302) 67(4) 57

He had lot of chances in this match. In the first set , twice he went down a break but broke back immediately and was up 4-2 in the tie break only to lose 5 straight points.

Then, in second set he had 3 breakpoints at 40-0, 5-5 but could not convert any of those breakpoints. And in the next game got broken himself.

He just did not have the consistency in his game to overcome Donskoy.
Also his serve deserted him today, 4 aces and 4 double faults ( means 0 free points) against 12 aces and 3 double faults by Donskoy.
On the contrary yesterday, Mukund had 11 aces and 2 double faults in the match he won.

Against these challenger level player such as Donskoy, Mukund needs to have his serve game at the top as his ground game is usually up and down, superb at times but makes a lot of errors at times.
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by sameerph »

For next week's M25 at Mysuru, the entry list becomes slightly weaker, top 4 seeds of this week who are all foreigners are still there as is Indian 5th seed Mukund. But, 3 lower foreigner seeds are out next week, so RamK, Digivijay and Sid Rawat will be seeds 6th to 8th.

Apart from these 4 seeds- 6 other Indians seem to have made the main draw- Manish, Niki, SDPD, Karan, Nitin and Rishab Agarwal.

So, 10 Indians directly into main draw. 4 wild cards may have gone to Rishi Reddy ( who is from Karnataka), Madhwin Kamath, maybe they have given one to India junior #2 Aryan Shah who was just outside qualifying entry list.

Overall, this week we should at least 18 Indians in main draw of 32.
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by knarayen »

jayakris wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:57 pm
knarayen wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:35 pm
The next week event is in Mysuru. Would be great if you can find a way to check out the new 1-hour freeway to Mysuru :)
Great idea - however I can't leave my parents and go out of station for days at a time - kind of locked into Bangalore until their situation improves.
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by knarayen »

sameerph wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 7:12 am Mukund goes down against Donskoy .

[SF] (5) Sasikumar Mukund (IND,401) l. (3) -Evgeny Donskoy (RUS,302) 67(4) 57


He just did not have the consistency in his game to overcome Donskoy.

Against these challenger level player such as Donskoy, Mukund needs to have his serve game at the top as his ground game is usually up and down, superb at times but makes a lot of errors at times.
I noticed the same at the Challenger in Bangalore. It is a mental thing. He gets down on himself and not able to shrug off mistakes - tries too hard to finish from the baseline (Praj Syndrome strikes again) which results in more unforced errors!

Prof
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by sameerph »

sameerph wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 5:09 pm So, 10 Indians directly into main draw. 4 wild cards may have gone to Rishi Reddy ( who is from Karnataka), Madhwin Kamath, maybe they have given one to India junior #2 Aryan Shah who was just outside qualifying entry list.

Overall, this week we should at least 18 Indians in main draw of 32.
6 Indians qualified for main draw in a 2 round qualies this week- Veterans Vishnu Vardhan and Ranjit Virali-Murugesan, Qamar brothers- Faisal and Fardeen, Ishaque Iqbal and top seed Siddharth Vishwakarma.

Also Donskoy seems to have withdrawn from this week and is replaced by another Indian lucky loser- Sandesh Kurale.

So, overall 21 Indians in main draw of 32. Top 3 seeds are still foreign players. Second quarter in top half has 7 out of 8 Indians with Mukund and RamK in same quarter slated to meet in QF. We should get an Indian semi finalist from that quarter. But, other 3 quarters we need to create some upsets to get into SF.
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by jayakris »

In the main draw at the Mysuru M25, Karan Singh beat Grigoriy Lomakin (KAZ,955) 63 36 76(3). So Karan now runs into the 7th seed Sid Rawat who beat Dali Blanch (USA,821) 63 62. Qualifiers Faisal Qamar and Ishaque Eqbal beat wildcards Rishi Reddy and Suraj Prabodh respectively. Wildcard Madhvin Kamath retired against a Korean qualifier.
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by Omkara »

Who put sense into RamK to play M25 in India?
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by jayakris »

Omkara wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 3:22 am Who put sense into RamK to play M25 in India?
Who told you that he has become sensible? He had no other choice. It was like play this, or stop playing singles. Even he would make the sensible choice. [Rajiv may have told him; but it isn't like he has ever really listened to good sense from Rajiv :)]
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by jayakris »

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. RamK didn't show up. Replaced by Lucky loser Abhinav Sanjeev Shanmugam. Crap! :damn:
(Hope he isn't injured or anything)

And Sid Viswa walked off the court after winning the first two games. He was playing well. I have no idea what happened. He hit two screaming winners to hold serve and go up 2-0, walked across and said something to Ellis Blake on why he was retiring, picked up his bag and left. Just like that. Maybe there was a very slight limp as he was walking, but I don't know. WTF? :damn:
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by Rajiv »

jayakris wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 3:50 am
Omkara wrote: Wed Mar 29, 2023 3:22 am Who put sense into RamK to play M25 in India?
Who told you that he has become sensible? He had no other choice. It was like play this, or stop playing singles. Even he would make the sensible choice. [Rajiv may have told him; but it isn't like he has ever really listened to good sense from Rajiv :)]
For a ranking which is in free fall ITF's are a safe quick fix medicine to address that problem immediately and stop the situation from further deteriorating which I was after him to enter the futures last year in USA at which even Prajnesh also was playing but didn't
Few months later in Oct forced and made sure he entered Jakarta +India futures to maximize 60 points which were on offer at these futures, and Jakarta was no visa issue as visa is on arrival but like Mysuru withdrew at the last moment and entered Japan to spent 4 weeks in Japanese Challengers and we all know what happened in singles in Japan for 4 weeks and in doubles with Khade.
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by arjun2761 »

When asked about Indian players, Donskoy noted that as a group they lacked fitness. He said with Indian opponents even if they played well for a while he knew their level would drop after some time and that’s what would happen each time. When asked if they lacked mental confidence, he noted that they were the same as the others.

I think there is likely some truth to his observations.
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