Sumit Nagal thread

[vparam]

Hopefully nothing serious. May just need to take a few weeks off to recharge.

[RohitG]

He does have a week off next week before he goes to his second leg of Latin American challengers- Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay.. The way the grind is needed on these clay courts, it might be worthwhile if he skips Uruguay and travels to India for the Pune challenger thus ensuring another week's break to mitigate his fatigue. Else he might be playing 4 weeks in a row assuming he is gonna play at Pune. If not, even 3 weeks non-stop doesn't look encouraging. This loss does raise the demand from the remaining tournaments, to get to top-100 by this year seems tougher

[knarayen]

Sumit and his team have decided their off-season training camp in Chennai ... Som made a tweet regarding this.

Wow training at my alma mater! Looks like Somdev will be there as well. Anybody in Chennai know the dates/times of the training sessions. I have played many matches on the slow clay at IIT Chennai - I was the team captain in 1974 ha ha. I may drop in if I am there.

[PKBasu]

The signs of physical trouble were there in the previous tournament. It is best to take a week off when this happens, and now the body has forced him to.

[jaydeep]

The draw sheet shows, retirement due to abdominal pain ... Hopefully, nothing serious, get well soon Sumit.

[sameerph]

He does have a week off next week before he goes to his second leg of Latin American challengers- Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay.. The way the grind is needed on these clay courts, it might be worthwhile if he skips Uruguay and travels to India for the Pune challenger thus ensuring another week's break to mitigate his fatigue. Else he might be playing 4 weeks in a row assuming he is gonna play at Pune. If not, even 3 weeks non-stop doesn't look encouraging. This loss does raise the demand from the remaining tournaments, to get to top-100 by this year seems tougher

I agree. He also needs to play on hard courts a bit. Playing exclusively on clay I think is not the right strategy. After a week's break ( effectively almost 2 weeks as he lost early this week), play 2 weeks in South America, take a week's break and than Pune Challenger. That should be the plan. Not overstretching himself playing 4 consecutive weeks. If he is really getting close to top 100 ( and/or direct entry into AO), play one last week in one of the 2 challengers in Europe which are after the Pune challenger week. If not, just finish the year somewhere in 110's/120's where he is. That will also give a him a high seeding in AO qualies.

Then, he has no point to defend in first quarter of the next year and he can aim to break into top 100 at that time which will give him direct entry into FO and Wimbledon and ATP tournaments next summer.

[RohitG]

You're right Sameer. Besides he does have his off season with his team + Somdev at Chennai anyway. A contingency plan could be to try the AO wildcard playoffs if required and it will be easier to shuttle within Asia itself. I hope there's an update on Sumit's situation. The best case scenario is the one we discussed here, fatigue because Dominican Republic was in news for wrong reasons few months back where multiple tourists in unrelated events, became sick, had stomach cramps and what not. This is an article from CNN that investigates and aggregates on what went down:

Tourists to Dominican Republic say they were stricken with illness

[sameerph]

A contingency plan could be to try the AO wildcard playoffs if required and it will be easier to shuttle within Asia itself. I hope there's an update on Sumit's situation.

True, I had forgotten that AO wild card playoff is another option available to him.

These are the details of the 2020 event-

AUSTRALIAN OPEN 2020 ASIA-PACIFIC WILDCARD PLAY-OFF

It is in early December. So, probably he can do it before off season training. This is an option for Prajnesh too if he falls out of top 100.

[vparam]

Surprised to see that Sumit is playing doubles today. So I guess whatever was bothering him yesterday was not severe enough for him to skip the rest of the tournament.

[jayakris]

Surprised to see that Sumit is playing doubles today. So I guess whatever was bothering him yesterday was not severe enough for him to skip the rest of the tournament.

They just lost 26 46. I saw only the second set, but Sumit seemed to be quite okay. I guess they wanted to get the $1080 to share, which is not bad money.

I liked the friendly attitude between Sumit and his partner. They were talking a lot. Just a friendly match, I guess. Our guys dropped serve twice each in the sets. At 26 35, they broke the other guys and extended it a bit but then they dropped serve again and lost the match.

[R1] Pedja Krstin (SRB)/ Sumit Nagal (IND) l (3) Ariel Behar (URU)/ Gonzalo Escobar (ECU) 26 46

[RohitG]

Glad to know that he was fit enough to at least step on the court.

[jaydeep]

On the ITD page, it was mentioned that Sumit retired due to heatstroke in the singles.

[RohitG]

Sumit's doubles partner from previous week, F Coria has reached the finals in singles this week and is facing Varillas of Peru. Varillas was the winner of Campinas challenger. Both players will catapult up the rankings, finalist getting 75 and winner gets 125 points. 3 weeks still to go after next week's break in the South American swing.. it's getting heated up with every player trying to pull off what Garin did last season. Varillas though outside top-150, will be a hot crowd favorite in Lima.

[RohitG]

Montevideo entry list is out and Sumit hasn't entered the tournament. So Peru and Ecuador- 2 weeks it is.

[sameerph]

And then probably Pune to round off the season. ( unless he decides to play in AO wild card play-off).