ATP qualifiers

gvhvhg · Post by **gvhvhg** » Fri Jan 17, 2003 1:32 am

What is the general range for rankings in ATP qualifiers? This question has sprung to mind for me as i was confused about how Harsh, Sridhar and others were able to get into the qualies for chennai without wc's. mabye i am mistaken and they did have wc's, but i am pretty sure that they didn't and got in ranking based. If their rankings are high enough to enter qualies ( atleast on the Tata Open levl) then why dont they do so for these tournaments??????

Post by **jayakris** » Fri Jan 17, 2003 2:44 am

There is really no way to predict where the qualifying cutoff for ATP tournaments will be. The only thing that is normal is that there will be at least 5 or 6 top-200 players in the qualies. For normal 32-draw events, there are 4 qualifier spots in the main draw. For 64-draws, there are eight. The chance to get through the qualies without beating a top-200 or at least a top-250 player is nearly zero in any event. This is the reason why players do not try to play ATP qualies till they are sure of being able to beat top-300 players consistently. It is a waste of time.

As for the cutoffs, I have seen some ATP event qualies going without enough players to fill 32 spots! .. I have also seen some of the masters events qualies closing at rankings like 175 ! .. In fact I remember one occasion last year when a $400K type ATP event in the USA had a cut somewhere near 1300 (basically anybody could have walked in), but in the same week there was a 15K+H satellite where the qualies cut was somewhere near 750! .. The reason is that the ATP event qualies had a few players in the top-200 and the below 400 players would be wasting their time trying qualies; so they all went to the small town where the tough futures qualies were - at least there was a chance to make it in ..

Rohan and Harsh will soon be playing a lot of challenger qualies where you normally would only need to get past top-300 to top-500 type players to make it in. Actually both of them would get seeded among the top-8 in the qualies with their top-450 type ranking. If you get seeded in the top-4 for challenger qualies (normally you need a ranking in the 300-450 range for that), you don't need to face higher ranked players in the qualies.

Hope that all makes sense.

Jay

Post by **Dhruv** » Fri Jan 17, 2003 3:48 am

Also to add to what Jay has to say, is ATP points. You only get points if you qualify for the main event, unlike the WTA that gives points even for varoius levels in the qualies at some tournaments.

So it is better points-wise to play a challenger and get a 2 points for qualifying and a point for making the main draw first round.

Rohan is planning to enter the Kyoto and Ho Chi Min city challengers after the 2 Nigerian $15K futures and the Davis Cup. The cut for the main draw for these last year was 275 and 301 respectively. If he does reasonably well in those challengers and Jorhat he should be quite close to making the cut directly or be one of the top couple of seeds at the qualies.

I would assume Harsh has a similar schedule as both are being trained/directed by the AITA. He has bit more to do points wise so I don;t think he could make the main draw of those challengers but he could definetly make the qualies. Neither tourney had high cutoffs last year.

gvhvhg · Post by **gvhvhg** » Fri Jan 17, 2003 9:56 pm

Thanks guys i agree with u both to an extent. But the thing is that players atleast RB should mix things up( if not HM) and play some ATP Qualifyers. I mean Dhruv, thing of it this way if RB were able to beat a top 200 player and qualify for a main draw event the think of the points he would get! Rohan has also displayed a lot more than beating a top 200 player, have you forgotten about taik-lee who is in the top 100

Thanks again guys for clearing some things up. I hope you agree with my points

gvhvhg · Post by **gvhvhg** » Fri Jan 17, 2003 10:00 pm

sorry fo 2 posts but i didn't see the first one show up

Post by **Dhruv** » Fri Jan 17, 2003 10:05 pm

Hi, Yes I see sort of what you mean, but as under the new points system of the ATP does not give you any points for beating even the world number 1 other than the points for the tourney level. eg. If at the Delhi futures Hewitt, Aggasi, Ferrero had shown up and Rohan had beaten all 3 to reach the finals he still would only have 12 points no more.

What I would like to see though is that after Rohan reaches the level where he can get into challengers he should play those exclusively and ATP qualifiers other than maybe the odd $15K or $15K+H here and there. I would hate to see him play the $10K futures events that he currently plays. The same is true for Harsh as well. SKS too should be playing more at the $15K level + and less at the $10K level. But unfortunately the way the system works one has to make the basic points to get your ranking upto around the 300 level and then you can do a lot of the things that you are talking about.

PS: No problems. Even if you post two threads you can delete your old messages by clicking on the top right hand

of your message when you are logged in. You can also edit your old post if you want by basically clicking on the

on the top right hand corner as well.

Jay and I can do that as well on this board for all and any posts and I deleted the first post for you. You can fool around with that if you want .

See what you can delete and edit and can't. Don't get into too much trouble though.

If you do just e-mail me at support.

Post by **jayakris** » Fri Jan 17, 2003 11:37 pm

gvhvhg: You are generally correct in what you are saying, except I think they both need a few more events before they can start doing ATP qualies and all that. Just that Rohan beat one top-100 player and has a couple more top-200 wins is no enough. ATP top levels are so competitive these days and there is really no substitute for experience. Once RB and HM know that they can beat top-100 to top-250 players (HM actually does not have a win in that range yet) 2 out of 3 times, they can start playing those ATP qualies.

The first thing is to stay safe in terms of the points they have and to try challengers. I don't think RB needs more than another 20 or 25 points to add to the 75+ he has, before moving to challengers confidently. I think he will go through successfully in challenger qualies 2 out of three times now. Otherwise you will end up wasting weeks not picking up any points and your ranking will start falling causing more trouble! .. I think RB may play 3 or 4 more futures and start on challengers in a couple of months.

Harsh needs at least another 3-4 months and about 7 to 10 more futures weeks (that is probably about 30 to 50 points with a couple of titles, a copuple of finals and a couple of semis) to get up to the 300-350 range and confidently move on to challenger level.

Once you are in the challenger level, it is a different story. Now you are talking about picking up 100-150 points to move into the top-200 or top-150 .. It is anybody's guess how many challengers RB would need before he gets that many points.

He needs to be smart and plan well. It is NOT a good idea to jump too high and try ATP qualies. Before you know you would have wasted months at a time. You see, there are no short cuts in these things. Need to pay your dues at all levels and move up. It is foolish to expect that you can qualify into ATP events on a regular basis. Even LP and MB in their best days could only qualify into half of the qualies they played. That is with top-250 and top-150 rankings.

One step at a time. Just remember not to repeat steps and waste time unnecessarily, that's all..

Jay

gvhvhg · Post by **gvhvhg** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 4:33 pm

Thanks again guys.

you have really helped me understand this topic more clearly and have answered my q's.

gvhvhg