The Sports-India Community

We have rarely had more than one Indian doing very well in US college tennis.  For some time Harsh Mankad and Ajay Ramaswamy were ranked high enough, but otherwise it has always been just one player or so in the top-125 ranking.  The current rankings show four Indians, and so it is time for a US college tennis thread.

The latesst ranking (March 2nd, 2008) show

#1 -- Somdev Dev Varman, Senior, U. of Virginia,
#82 -- Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan, Freshman, U. of Washington
#94 -- Saketh Sai Myneni, Sophomore, U. of Alabama
#125 -- Sanam K Singh, Freshman, U. of Virginia

Indian-Americans(?) Sheeva Parbhu (senior,NotreDame.U) and Vijay Paul (sophomore,Venderbilt.U) are at #81 and tied for #82 respectively.

No Indian girls in the top-125, but Indian-American Anamika Bhargava (sophomore, Peperdine.U) is #48

Sai Saketh has done a bit better than I thought, and seems to have taken a little step up this year.  He is playing #1 for Alabama.  Keep an eye on him too.  He took off to US college before he created any serious news in India as a junior.

Jay

Great!!! At last now we r having serious US college tennis thread where I am able to find all latest news about our US college playing players in a single thread ... Thanks Jay and PKB for initiating discussion on this issue.

good to see a college thread,
my university  used to have a good player
vinay venkatraghavn playing for us.

March 18th biweekly update:  ITA Rankings.

#1 -- Somdev Dev Varman, Senior, U. of Virginia,
#85 -- Saketh Sai Myneni, Sophomore, U. of Alabama
#94 -- Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan, Freshman, U. of Washington
#97 -- Sanam K Singh, Freshman, U. of Virginia

Indian-Americans Sheeva Parbhu (senior,NotreDame.U) is #83 and Vijay Paul (sophomore,Venderbilt.U) is #101.

Indian-American Anamika Bhargava (sophomore, Peperdine.U) is #57 and Ragini Acharya (sophomore, William & Mary U) is #121.

Jay

College tennis online:

http://www.collegetennisonline.com/default.aspx

UVA played 3 matches over last week. Both Somdev & Sanam won all 3 of their matches although Somdev dropped a set against #72 player.

Both are having great unbeaten run since January ( after dual matches bagan). Somdev is 16-0 since then & Sanam is 18-0. In fact Sanam has not lost a set in his last 13 matches.( although he has only 3 wins over ranked players as he is mostly playing at no. 3 or 4),

Intestingly , Saketh Myneni is getting to play a lot more competitive matches then Sanam & Jeevan as he is playing no. 1 singles for University of Alabama. He has 4 wins over ranked players but all his losses have come against ranked player ( some of them  in close 3 setters).

 

Sanam is now down to 125 even though he has won 20 in a row mostly with easy straight set wins. Included in this stretch is straight set wins over the last 2 ranked players he's played.  Another player (Ten Berge) who was in the 50s when Sanam beat him has slipped out of the ranking further lowering the quality wins for Sanam which is by far the most important factor for the college rankings. 

Meanwhile, team mate Inglot who now loses more often than he wins remains in the top 10 because he has a larger number of quality wins.

i got to watch #44 Wisconsin Badgers beat #16 Illini 5-2 (6-3) this past weekend.  What a treat that was! 

With this win, Wisconsin has moved up to #35, while Illini dropped one spot to #17.

There were upsets galore, and about 7 out of the 9 matches went down the wire.  These kids (20 yr olds) played their hearts out for 3.5 hours.  The highest ranked player on court was Illini's Ryan Rowe (currently #12) and he won a close 3-setter against Badgers' Moritz Baumann (#44).

If the quality of these matches is any indication of life on the tour, oh man, what a grind it is!

What has all this got to with Indians in college tennis?  Not much really, though i noticed that several of the Badgers' wins were over Illini players ranked 15-20 spots higher.  The Badgers have Merk Michalika (#113) who is also a Romania Futures winner (just as UVa's Sanam is).  And he plays the number 3 singles spot!  Such is the depth in college tennis these days.

In one of the upcoming ties, Wisconsin goes up against #2 Ohio St.  Go Badgers!

3 Indian names at the ITA National championships.

Ragini Acharya (winner)
Sanam Singles (plays in the finals today)
Vallverdu (Daniel & Laura)

Congrats Sanam for winning double crown at ITA National Summer Championships.

from article wrote:The singles and doubles champions from the ITA National Summer Championships earned wild cards into the first national tournaments of the 2008-09 collegiate tennis season - the D'Novo Men's and Riviera/ITA Women's All-American Championships in October.

Congratulations to Sanam for winning the title.  I hope that he will join Somdev in raising the standard of Indian tennis once he is done with college.

Congratulations to Sanam!

BSharma wrote: ....I hope that he will join Somdev in raising the standard of Indian tennis once he is done with college.

I too hope he raises the standard of Indian tennis, but gets out of college soon and won't make us wait that long.


- Varma

The 2008-09 College preseason rankings came out last thursday. Here are the Indians and Indian-Americans in the rank list (which is made for top-125 in singles and top-50 teams in doubles). The preseason rankings are not computer-generated, but the humans who rank do use the latest computer ranks from last year to a good extent.

Men's Singles:

45 Saketh Myneni, Senior, University of Alabama
74 Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan, Sophomore, University of Washington
80 Vijay Paul, Junior, Vanderbilt University (Indian-American)
82 Sanam Singh, Sophomore, University of Virginia

Men's Doubles:

33 Sanam Singh/ Houston Barrick, University of Virginia
42 Vijay Paul/ Alex Zotov, Vanderbilt University

Women's Sngles:

60 Tara Iyer, Junior, Duke University
75 Anamika Bhargava, Sophomore, Pepperdine (Indian-American)
87 Ragini Acharya, Senior, William & Mary (Indian-American)

Women's Doubles:

20 Katarina Zoricic/ Ragini Acharya, College of William & Mary
47 Anamika Bhargava/ Jill Braverman, Pepperdine University

Jay

Like Sanam , Jeevan has made a stong start to the dual season at University of Washington where he has been mostly playing at no. no. 2 or no. 1 singles.

These are his results in dual season-

v. Eastern Washington University
Pos. #2 d. Kyle Schraeder 60 61

v. Univ. of Portland
Pos. #1 d. Joel Kincaid 62 75

v. Univ. of San Francisco
Pos. #2 d. Asaf Cohen 63 62

v. #1 Ohio State University
Pos. #2 l. #3 Steven Moneke 63 36 (5-10)

v.#57 Indiana University-
Pos. #2 d. Santiago Gruter 62 63

v. #3 University of Georgia
Pos. #2 d. #35 Jamie Hunt 62 63

v.#71 Univ. of Oklahoma
Pos. #1 d. #44 Andrei Daescu 46 64 62

v.#30 Boise State University
Pos. #1 #22 Clancy Shields 63 64


7-1 for dual season with only loss to no. 3 ranked player in super tie break & last 3 wins over top 50 players.

Jeevan has been flying under the radar for quite some time. Remember that Sanam, Jeevan and Vivek were the trio from a few years back when they were all under 18. I expect big things from 1 or 2 of them - I have no idea which one though. Sanam and Vivek have probably got a bit more ink so far, but Jeevan could well turn out to be better than them. It has been a very good start for him this year.

Jay