ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

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sameerph
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ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by sameerph »

4 weeks of action at futures level start next week in India with 3 M25's in New Delhi, Lucknow and Mysuru and ending with M15 in Chennai.

This is the entry list for first week in Delhi-

1. Oliver CRAWFORD (USA)
2. Evgeny DONSKOY (RUS)
3. Vladyslav ORLOV (UKR)
4. Sasikumar MUKUND (IND)
5. Dominik PALAN (CZE)
6. Arthur WEBER (FRA)
7. Eric VANSHELBOIM (UKR)
8. Shuichi SEKIGUCHI (JPN)
9. Sidharth RAWAT (IND)
10. Digvijay Pratap SINGH (IND)
11. Blake ELLIS (AUS)
12. Manish SURESHKUMAR (IND)
13. Yusuke TAKAHASHI (JPN)
14. George LOFFHAGEN (GBR)
15. Niki KALIYANDA POONACHA (IND)
16. Palaphoom KOVAPITUKTED (THA)
17. Boris BUTULIJA (SRB)
18. David PEREZ SANZ (ESP)
19. Karan SINGH (IND)
20. Jacob BRADSHAW (AUS)
21. Nitin Kumar SINHA (IND)
22. Grigoriy LOMAKIN (KAZ)


So, tough entry list as you would expect where there are back to back M25's. Only 7 Indians in the main draw entry list with only Mukund likely to be seeded.
4 wild cards should be Indians and hopefully at least 3 of the 6 qualifiers should be Indians -Rishab Agarwal, Siddharth Vishwakarma, Rishi Reddy and Vishnu Vardhan should be among top 6 seeds .

So, eventually there should be between 13 to 15 Indians in the main draw of 32. But, they need create a lot of upsets to go deep in these tournaments.
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by Dinesh »

I don’t understand why Prajnesh is skipping these Futures whilst not having entered any other challengers. Baffling!
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by sameerph »

As expected Rishab Agarwal is the top seed in qualies which is followed by 2 Koreans, Rishi Reddy is 4th seed, Vishnu Vardhan 5th, Faisal Qamar is 7th seed. So, as per seedings 4 Indians are expected to qualify.

Don't know who got 4 wild cards- the only who I see in the qualifying entry list but not in qualifying draw among higher ranked ones is Siddharth Vishwakarma.
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by PKBasu »

Amazing that former world #65 Evgeny Donskoy is playing a Futures in India now. He's been playing Challengers and the ATP tour events (Chennai, Pune) in India for the past 10-12 years, and made a couple of Challenger finals in Kolkata (2014) and Pune (2015), losing both (the latter to Yuki). He is 32 now, but will still be a formidable name in this field. Could be a good scalp for the Indian players to aim for!
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by jayakris »

Well, well, our kid whom we temporarily forgot, 16 year old Rushil Khosla, is in the final qualies at the Delhi M25. He just had a very good 63 64 win over Patrik Oplustil (CZE,1572), who is the 17 year old who beat Yuvan Nandal in straight sets at the Nonthaburi J300 just this week. I saw the match. Optusil is not that highly ranked in the juniors and seemed to be and up and down type player. But I saw the match and was very impressed with Rushil's talent (as are many people). He is not too tall yet, but has great variety in his shots and has quite an effective serve too. Superb court sense and ball placements. Nice drop shots, and very good instincts on when to do serve and volley. Some good retrieval skills too.

Rushil was injured or something since late last year when he had a couple of retirements and looked totally off-color at the junior Davis Cup world finals too. Looks like he is back. He was all the way up to 122 in junior rankings in early 2022 but all those point have fallen off, as he has not played since November and his junior ranking has fallen a lot. We can now look forward to him doing well in the junior circuit.

Other youngsters like Madhvin Kamath, Chriag Duhan, etc have also done well to reach Q3.
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by vatsalnew »

jayakris wrote: Mon Mar 13, 2023 11:28 am Well, well, our kid whom we temporarily forgot, 16 year old Rushil Khosla, is in the final qualies at the Delhi M25. He just had a very good 63 64 win over Patrik Oplustil (CZE,1572), who is the 17 year old who beat Yuvan Nandal in straight sets at the Nonthaburi J300 just this week. I saw the match. Optusil is not that highly ranked in the juniors and seemed to be and up and down type player. But I saw the match and was very impressed with Rushil's talent (as are many people). He is not too tall yet, but has great variety in his shots and has quite an effective serve too. Superb court sense and ball placements. Nice drop shots, and very good instincts on when to do serve and volley. Some good retrieval skills too.

Rushil was injured or something since late last year when he had a couple of retirements and looked totally off-color at the junior Davis Cup world finals too. Looks like he is back. He was all the way up to 122 in junior rankings in early 2022 but all those point have fallen off, as he has not played since November and his junior ranking has fallen a lot. We can now look forward to him doing well in the junior circuit.

Other youngsters like Madhvin Kamath, Chriag Duhan, etc have also done well to reach Q3.
Rushil was actually struggling financially. He does not have the funds to travel outside India, and is hence focusing on just the Indian set of tournaments.
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by jayakris »

vatsalnew wrote: Mon Mar 13, 2023 12:03 pm Rushil was actually struggling financially. He does not have the funds to travel outside India, and is hence focusing on just the Indian set of tournaments.
Thanks vatsal. Where the hell is AITA?? This is horrible. The whole nation of India cannot find money to help these kids. We have so few talented ones, and we do nothing to help them.

There are few people here who have offered to help players. Maybe start a gofundme or something?
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by sameerph »

But, Rushil also missed Indian junior tournament series in January too. So, maybe he had some injury.

There are 3 all Indian match-ups in final qualifying round- top seed Rishab against Chirag Duhan, Vishnu against Raghav Jaisinghani and Rushil against 7th seed Faisal Qamar and 4 matches where Indians - Oges, Madhwin Kamath, Guhan Rajan ( a new name) and Abhinav Sanjeev all play against higher ranked players. Hope at least 1-2 of them cause upsets to add to the 3 Indians guaranteed to qualify.

Main draw is out ( except qualifiers being placed). Mukund is 4th seed and Sid Rawat is 8th seed. But, 4 wild cards are Siddharth Vishwakarma, Rohan Mehra, Sarthak Sudan and Shivank Bhatnagar. Who are the other 3 apart from Siddharth ? Why were Rushil and Chirag Duhan not given wild cards ?
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by jayakris »

sameerph wrote: Mon Mar 13, 2023 4:16 pm Main draw is out ( except qualifiers being placed). Mukund is 4th seed and Sid Rawat is 8th seed. But, 4 wild cards are Siddharth Vishwakarma, Rohan Mehra, Sarthak Sudan and Shivank Bhatnagar. Who are the other 3 apart from Siddharth ? Why were Rushil and Chirag Duhan not given wild cards ?
Somebody needs to file a PIL or something on AITA. A whole bunch of worms who claim to be Indian tennis guys are running that rotten organization now. This event is right there at their stadium and they don't give wildcards to our best youngsters. I was okay with Rushil not getting a wildcard because he needs matches at this time, but it is unpardonable not to give a WC to Chirag Duhan, our best player who just go out of junior levels.

I was never really much of a vocal critic of AITA here, because I didn't have much expectations of them. Generally in the past, at least till several years ago, they used to do the minimum window-dressing acts of giving some wildcards and all that, and very occasionally even giving some small help for Indian players to go abroad. And others were managing to help some Indian players. But these days, AITA is doing NOTHING. And other tennis supporters seem to not be doing much either just when Indian tennis is in big trouble, so the need for AITA to do something is even more. I would stop criticizing if they even show some minor signs of understanding the depth of despair Indian tennis is in. If even the minimal act of help with wildcards to our best players is not being done at this time, it is criminal dereliction of duty by the federation.

I am sure they have excuses like "hey, we are organizing these events that need money, and need to listen to our sponsors". Such excuses don't wash. Get it done. Like they say crudely in the US, "sh*t or get off the pot," you AITA lowlifes and the so-called former player "greats" that play the "family AITA game".

Everybody associated with AITA should be ashamed of themselves.
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by Dinesh »

This week’s tournament is in Delhi and based on the latest AITA rankings, those 3 wildcards in question went to the highest ranked players (#25,50,55) from Delhi. Chirag is from Haryana and is ranked #42 nationally.

I am actually okay with this selection. Also, wasn’t this decided by the local/state tennis association (and not AITA)? So, maybe they have a quota for the local players, whilst allocating one to a non-local higher ranked player (which is Vishwakarma, #15).
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by vatsalnew »

sameerph wrote: Mon Mar 13, 2023 4:16 pm But, Rushil also missed Indian junior tournament series in January too. So, maybe he had some injury.
He was going through mental health issues
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by sameerph »

vatsalnew wrote: Mon Mar 13, 2023 7:42 pm
sameerph wrote: Mon Mar 13, 2023 4:16 pm But, Rushil also missed Indian junior tournament series in January too. So, maybe he had some injury.
He was going through mental health issues
Thanks, Vatsal. That is sad to know. Hope he has fully recovered and creates some news in these series of futures.
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by jayakris »

And Rushil came through in the final qualies, upsetting the 7th seed Faisal Qamar (IND,1175) in an STB, 67(5) 60 [12-10] :) ...

But Chirag was not able to get through, as he went down in an STB to the top seed in the qualies, experienced Rishab Agrawal (IND,997), 76(5) 36 [4-10].

Vishnu Vardhan is the third Indian qualifier. Here are the qualies draw.

Here is the main draw... Vishnu gets the 3rd seed Vladyslav Orlov (UKR,401), Rushil gets the 6th seed Eric Vanshelboim (UKR,515), and Rishab takes the 2nd seed Palan's spot (he withdrew, I guess), getting Jacob Bradshaw (AUS,912)

[update: as below, Faisal is in as an LL... He gets the 5th seed Arthur Weber (FRA,504)]
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by prasen9 »

Faisal Qamar got in as a lucky loser.
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Re: ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

Post by jayakris »

A dandy going on between Digvijay and Niki in the R1. These two have always played close dandies. Like at multiple Finesta National championships earlier (iirc). Digvijay at 26 64 66 and STB starting. Digvijay served for the match and faced 2 BP at 15-40. Saved one, but got a bad call on a great forehand to get broken to 6-6 Live stream

And Niki takes it 7-2 in the STB. Feeling sad for Digvijay on that bad call (a close one that I thought was on the line) in the final game, but Niki played without mistakes while Digvijay probably got a bit tight at the end. But this is what happens between these two all the time!
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