Anand Amritraj thread

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Anand Amritraj thread

Post by PKBasu »

Vijay says in his autobiography that his elder brother Anand was the more accomplished at everything as they were growing up. Anand was the better student, much the better sportsman...but Vijay turned out to be taller, and eventually became much the better tennis player, and also a more charismatic personality.
But Anand had many great moments as a tennis player. Some of the best were of course at Indian players' happy-hunting ground in Newport, RI. That is where Anand beat John McEnroe in 1977, the week after McEnroe had made the semifinals at Wimbledon as a brash 18-year-old; Anand Amritraj thus has the rare distinction of having a winning career record (1-0) against John McEnroe! It is also where Anand beat Brian Teacher (the 1980 Australian Open champion) in 1981 (when Teacher was a top-10 player; he reached a career-high rank of #7 in October '81). Other important scalps in his career include top-10 player Brian Gottfried, whom he defeated in South Orange, NJ, in 1974 (when both were 22 years old). Anand also had winning career records against the Aussie Davis Cuppers Colin Dibley (2-1) and Bob Giltinan (1-0).
Anand reached a career-high singles ranking of 74 in 1974. But he excelled in doubles (mainly with brother Vijay), winning a total of 12 doubles titles and finishing runner-up 18 times. Perhaps their biggest title was at Queen's Club in 1977. The previous year, Anand and Vijay made the doubles semi-final at Wimbledon, beating 3rd-seeded Frew McMillan and Bob Hewitt (of South Africa) in the first round, and only losing to the top seeds and eventual champions Ramirez/Gottfried. (I recently ran into Frew McMillan's son -- who is a financial journalist, and was thrilled and quite astonished to find I knew a good deal about his dad...!). That match, incidentally, was like a delayed version of one tie from the (never-played) 1974 Davis Cup final...Talking of which, Anand of course has the distinction of being a playing member of two Davis Cup teams (1974 and 1987) that made the finals of that premier team event.
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Anand Amritraj thread

Post by jaydeep »

Very unknown facts about Anand ... I was considering him only great player in Doubles ... Didn't knowing his accomplishment in Singles ... Again thanks PKB for taking us to ride in the past of Indian tennis.

Jaydeep.
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Anand Amritraj thread

Post by Rajiv »

pkb you missed a vital point , anand was a very good badminton player too and lost the junior nationals finals to partho ganguly.
so was badminton's loss tennis's gain or vice versa i feel the former.

yes he was a very good singles player ,qualities very much evident at the dc match in delhi which i saw , as a 35 yrs old playing live rubber against the hottest player on circuit at that time henri leconte , he lost in 4 sets and had ample chances to take it to decider. and a year before along with sashi and nandan won the asia cup for india beating our nemisis the koreans , won all his singles matches .
and to add to the list of notable singles victory was in new port if i am correct against big serving american john sadri( an armenian iranian like agassi)
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Anand Amritraj thread

Post by PKBasu »

Thanks for that reminder, Rajiv. The opposite happened to Nandu Natekar, of course. He lost in the final of the junior national tennis championship to Ramanathan Krishnan, and decided to concentrate on badminton instead. Of course Nandu went one better than Krish in his chosen sport! Natekar made the All-England final in badminton, while Krish twice made the SF at the All England Lawn Tennis (& Croquet) Club.
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Anand Amritraj thread

Post by PKBasu »

I should perhaps have mentioned Anand's most memorable singles victory in the Davis Cup. This came in the 1974 inter-zonal Semi-final against the USSR. India were ahead 2-1, but Anand's match against Teimuraz Kakulia was probably going to be decisive -- as the final match between Vijay and the previous year's Wimbledon runner-up and then world #9 Alex Metreveli was likely to be a very close-run thing. Anand came through in style, beating Kakoulia in five sets (6-3 in the fifth). And lest you think Kakoulia was an easy opponent, he had beaten Ion Tiriac (future coach of Boris Becker, Ivanisevic, etc) of Romania and Balacz Taroczy of Hungary the previous year in Davis Cup matches, and was a regular in the second or third round of the Slams in those years (he made R2 at Wimbledon, the USO and the FO in 1974, losing to Ashe at Wimbledon and Newcombe at the USO).
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Anand Amritraj thread

Post by PKBasu »

Perhaps Anand's best win in a Slam was at the US Open in 1974, where he beat 10th-seeded Manuel Orantes of Spain in STRAIGHT sets in the second round! That was the last year the US Open was played on grass (which, of course, was to the distinct disadvantage of Orantes relative to an Amritraj!). The following year, the US Open moved to clay courts, and Orantes won it! He also came to India for the 1975 Indian Open in Calcutta, beating Anand along the way but losing to Vijay in the final.
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Re: Anand Amritraj thread

Post by Rajiv »

if the atp website is be believed than anand has resurrected his playing career and finds himself ranked 699 on the doubles ranking , 
but a closer look suggest they  have goofed up in a big way  as stephen's points in kl have been added to his credit and how this confusion happened is a mystery , possibly to do with the amritaj name which still carries a lot of weight.
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Re: Anand Amritraj thread

Post by gbelday »

ATP :rofl: :kookoo: 

Thanks Rajiv and PKB for the updates!
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Re: Anand Amritraj thread

Post by StatsRock »

Thanks Basuji, for the info on Anand. Never knew he outgunned McEnroe immediately after the New Yorker's big splash in Wimby '77  :eek: I'd always considered Anand a bit of an also-ran but much enlightened today.
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Re: Anand Amritraj thread

Post by PKBasu »

Anand Amritraj's file from the Wimbledon archives:

http://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/scores/d ... index.html

Singles R2 three times (1973, 1977 and 1978; in the latter two he lost to seeded Australians in R2, taking 13th seed Phil Dent to 5 sets in 1977 and 14th seed John Alexander to four sets in 1978; in the latter year, there were three Indians in R2 of singles, Vijay losing in 5 sets to unseeded Dent and Royappa to 4th seeded Gerulaitis). In doubles, Anand made one SF, one other SF, and R3 two other times. One MxD QF, and one PQF.
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Re: Anand Amritraj thread

Post by PKBasu »

PKBasu wrote: Sat Mar 05, 2005 4:03 am Perhaps Anand's best win in a Slam was at the US Open in 1974, where he beat 10th-seeded Manuel Orantes of Spain in STRAIGHT sets in the second round! That was the last year the US Open was played on grass (which, of course, was to the distinct disadvantage of Orantes relative to an Amritraj!). The following year, the US Open moved to clay courts, and Orantes won it! He also came to India for the 1975 Indian Open in Calcutta, beating Anand along the way but losing to Vijay in the final.
Manuel Orantes was the 10th seed when he lost to Anand in the second round of the 1974 US Open. In 1975, Orantes (seeded third) won the US Open, in one of the few years that it was played on clay. That was almost certainly the biggest win of Anand Amritraj's career, and achieved at a Slam too.

Prajnesh and Yuki have yet to make R2 of a Slam, while Somdev never made R3 of a Slam. Anand's career-high of 74 was probably too low a singles ranking, affected by the fact that he played a lot of doubles.
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Re: Anand Amritraj thread

Post by rajitghosh »

In the 70s and 80s, I am not sure the ATP rankings considered the Grand Slams or even if they did the points were quite low. I remember in the later 80s there was an uproar on this when some players who did well in the tour events but failed in the Slams has high rankings. I think they corrected this in 1990. Moreover, there were 2 parallel tours- the WCT and ATP that did not consider each other's performances for their rankings. Vijay and Anand played a lot on the WCT tour. Vijay even went onto win the WCT World Championship doubles final in 1977 and qualified for the singles year ending event from 3 years in a row from 1980 to 82 (the same year his movie Octopussy released :p - sorry for the movie reference again). So quite likely Vijay and Anand were under ranked on the ATP tour. Moreover, I think French Open had some restrictions on players playing in the WCT. So Vijay played only once in the French Open in his entire career.
Today's players have definitely not reached the levels of the players who played till 1990. After Ramesh retired the only Indian male to reach the 3rd round of a Grand Slam was Leander.
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