Vishnu Vardhan thread...

[Tolamu]

Vishnu in Astana Challenger qualies. Easy match 1st up vs Abdukhalikov Syrym(KAZ,1740) today.

[sameerph]

Vishnu got married a few days back to fellow tennis player Soniya Dayal in Mumbai . This is the related news -

Indian Davis Cupper Vishnu Vardhan gets married

It has been pretty bad year for Vishnu after the high of representing India in the Olympics last year. Hope this brings turn around in fortunes for him.

[PKBasu]

Congrats to Vishnu on this very happy occasion, and major personal milestone. I hope he can focus a bit more on his tennis next year!

[sameerph]

Nice article on Vishnu -

Back From Injuries, Vishnu Biding His Time to be in National Reckoning

Good to know that he feels that he is free from injuries now.

[sameerph]

Time to bump this thread back up as Vishnu won his first singles futures title after 4 years today when he won the Chandigarh futures title. Although the field was not great and he was the top seed, he did beat 3 foreign players on the way to the title. He also won couple of Asian tour titles last week winning everything easily. So, he looks to have returned to decent form now.

With these title points , he will move up close to top 400 in the rankings.

[Rahb]

Time to bump this thread back up as Vishnu won his first singles futures title after 4 years today when he won the Chandigarh futures title. Although the field was not great and he was the top seed, he did beat 3 foreign players on the way to the title. He also won couple of Asian tour titles last week winning everything easily. So, he looks to have returned to decent form now.

With these title points , he will move up close to top 400 in the rankings.

He was the second seed Sameer. I hope this title gives him the confidence to play more tournaments abroad and hope he gives a serious thought once again to his professional career. He had reached four finals last year in the Indian Futures last year so a title justifies his performances on the Indian Futures circuit.

[PKBasu]

Vishnu is now 407 (just behind Prajneesh at 406) in the live rankings.
He really needs to try and start making the transition to Challengers. He is still only 28, so it is not yet too late.

[Varma]

I don't want to point fingers and make false accusations, but Vishnu's age has always been suspicious from his earlier days. He could possibly be older than his official age. We have had these discussions almost a decade back.

- Varma

[sameerph]

Is it ? I remember some discussion. Perhaps, Sandeep can throw some light on this. But, I am not sure why he would fudge his age. He hardly played any juniors to benefit from that.

[suresh]

I don't want to point fingers and make false accusations, but Vishnu's age has always been suspicious from his earlier days. He could possibly be older than his official age. We have had these discussions almost a decade back.

I really doubt if his age is off by a lot, if at all. First, he never played a lot in the juniors -- hence no need to fudge. At around 16, he started playing the men's circuit. In my interview for Sports-India, he mentioned that he was always a big kid and many of his cousins are a lot taller. In Jan 2007 he was in the third year of his degree (so that puts him at around 20 at that time). So he must be around 29 now -- he turns 29 in July according to his Wikipedia page.

[Rahb]

Second title of the season for Vishnu but it remains to be seen what he does from here on. He had entered in the Uzbek F3 Futures but then pulled out. It is remarkable that despite playing lesser number of tournaments as compared to some of the other Indian second string players, he performs better than them on most occasions.

[sameerph]

Vishnu is now ranked at 363 in ATP singles ranking, the highest he has been ranked since 2013. However, he needs to capitalise on this ranking and play some tournament abroad to maintain and improve that ranking. He has a lot of points falling off in early June.

He withdrew from Uzbek futures series and just saw that he has entered the Asian Tennis tour tournaments next week in Thailand. This will give him some extra money but will affect his ranking.

[sameerph]

With him playing on the Asian tennis tour for last 8-10 days, Vishnu could not defend his futures points from last year and has now fallen back to 415 in the singles rankings.

He has 20 more points to defend in July. He is now travelling from Bangkok to Fergana to play the Fergana challenger next week. He is now 1 out from main draw there with 2 special exempt spots still to clear. So, looks like he will get into main draw here.

After that he has entered the $10K Zimbabwe futures series (3 futures starting from June 20).

So, hopefully he will defend those points and earn a few more to get back inside top 400.

[suresh]

I am not too happy with Vishnu's scheduling. It is almost as if he is not so keen on moving the rankings.

[sameerph]

Agreed, Suresh. That is actually applicable to many of our players. They just do not appear desperate enough to try to play as many tournaments as possible and improve their rankings and go to a higher level.

Take for instance the case of VSP. Last year he had such a great start to the year -qualifying in at Chennai open and winning a couple of futures titles to take his ranking close to 350. He had a great chance to take his ranking to a level where he can start competing in challengers. Instead he went to Europe to play some club tennis and missed 4 months of action ( only playing a few tough ATP qualies over the week end.) and his ranking has now dropped.

They need to pick the opportunities at the right time and show some desperation/ enterprise in schedulling. That way I like RamK's attitude in playing a lots and lots of tournaments cris-crossing across Europe and Asia.