Yuki Bhambri

[gbelday]

Completely agree with arjun. Yuki is not going to forget his tennis . He needs to be prepared physically. There’s no point in playing if he is going to get injured again. I am glad that someone is finally giving him sound advice!

[PKBasu]

I'm not convinced the advice he is getting is entirely sound. He is physically fit enough to do some very heavy lifting in the gym, but he isn't yet fit enough to play tennis? Possible, but over-cautious, I think.

He will be 27 this July. It has been 10 years+ since he won the Australian Open junior title, and he has yet to make it past the first round of a Slam singles main draw. Father Time stops for nobody. He is going to have to come back playing a mix of Futures and Challengers (the latter with PR) in order to get his ranking back. That is a very long road -- effectively meaning that his injury break is a full year. In Yuki's case, every injury break has been like this (effectively starting again from scratch after about 9 months away, then taking 6 months to get a decent ranking back). He then really picks it up -- but after a month of optimal performances, is injured again. Depressing

[vparam]

I'm not convinced the advice he is getting is entirely sound. He is physically fit enough to do some very heavy lifting in the gym, but he isn't yet fit enough to play tennis? Possible, but over-cautious, I think.

He will be 27 this July. It has been 10 years+ since he won the Australian Open junior title, and he has yet to make it past the first round of a Slam singles main draw. Father Time stops for nobody. He is going to have to come back playing a mix of Futures and Challengers (the latter with PR) in order to get his ranking back. That is a very long road -- effectively meaning that his injury break is a full year. In Yuki's case, every injury break has been like this (effectively starting again from scratch after about 9 months away, then taking 6 months to get a decent ranking back). He then really picks it up -- but after a month of optimal performances, is injured again. Depressing

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[knarayen]

Hard to believe he hits 27 only now - with all the discussions in this forum it feels like he has been playing much longer. But seeing him do so well in patches there is always an expectation from us that he finally achieves his potential. The Gunner hit it late, maybe this is Yuki’s fate too we hope.

Prof

[Omkara]

Yuki's latest post suggests he is still unfit. Knee injury is not healing. He is targeting a return during hard court season. Reading his message, he doesn't seem very confident that he would be able to do the same.

[prasen9]

Doubles?

[knarayen]

Yuki's latest post suggests he is still unfit. Knee injury is not healing. He is targeting a return during hard court season. Reading his message, he doesn't seem very confident that he would be able to do the same.

Knee injury not healing - if it is a torn meniscus this could take some time. If he has worn out cartilage and bone-against-bone then that is not great either. Wonder which one it is.

Prof

[Omkara]

Hasn't mentioned anything. Just that the knee injury is taking a lot of time to heal. He is exercising.

[arjun2761]

Hopefully, it isn't bone-to-bone contact as he is a little too young for that. I suspect he has a tear or partial tear in his meniscus or perhaps one of the ligaments (ACL, MCL, PCL etc.) which is quite common among sportsmen and this type of injury takes quite a while to rest and rehab.

Agree with the suggestion that Yuki could consider switching to doubles as there is much less wear-and-tear in doubles and he certainly has the return game and net ability to be a decent (top 50) doubles player.

[PKBasu]

Yuki's ranking has plummeted to 970, and he will soon be out of the rankings altogether as it will be over a year since he last played a tournament. This is a troubling, excessively long injury break.
Ironically, Yuki is in Manhattan now, presumably getting ready to do some commentary for Indian TV channels at the US Open. I hope the injury is closer to healing, but it doesn't look good.

[jayakris]

Yes, PKB. I'm beginning to think that something is so seriously chronic as to take him out of tennis altogether. I pray not. What a pity it would be. He had so much talent but injuries never let him reach or stay where he should've been. Again, I'm praying to see him back.

[PKBasu]

Yuki doesn’t seem to be doing USO commentary. Instead he seems to be on an “around-the-world” holiday. After various points in the US and Canada, he’s now in the Greek islands. The signs aren’t good...

[Omkara]

Yuki doesn’t seem to be doing USO commentary. Instead he seems to be on an “around-the-world” holiday. After various points in the US and Canada, he’s now in the Greek islands. The signs aren’t good...

Absolutely. Same happened with Som. Injury, long holiday and then sudden retirement.

[PKBasu]

I hope that isn't the plan. Yuki is much too young to retire suddenly. And Somdev had some substantive achievements -- final of an ATP event in India, win over a former US Open champion, gold medals at the CWG and Asiad, two NCAA singles titles -- on which he can build a post-retirement career. Yuki, apart from briefly making it to top-100 twice in his career, really doesn't have anything substantive to show yet. He can certainly play doubles productively if the body doesn't allow him to persist with singles.

[RohitG]

Agreed with PKB and we've seen that point multiple times on this thread, about the shift towards doubles, he can play for another 10 years if he wants. Divij, Rohan, Purav, Paes and Jeevan are all older than him and he can be our doubles #1 player, target a good show at the slams and the Olympics.. but all that is up to him. The last we saw was one post on insta where he had mentioned in the captions about making a comeback in the later hard court season.. after USO he will be out of the rankings, the least he can do is talk about his injury status to his fans.