N Sriram Balaji thread

[sameerph]

22 year old N Shriram Balaji won his first first ITF futures title today when $10K India F6 at Chennai. Balaji did not have a great junior career at ITF level but IIRC he was a junior national champion at some point of time. He started making some progress since last year when he started training at Schüttler-Waske Tennis University at Germany. He won quite a few matches on clay court futures in Germany & Turkey last year. Then, towards end of the year he reached his first futures final at Kolkata. He repeated that feat early this year at Chandigarh. He was defeated in both of those finals by Jeevan & Sanam respectively.

It seems ( based in post match interview), he saved 2 match points in the QF against Vijayant Malik & that proved to turning point for him this week. He is tall & has a big serve which should help as he aims to progress on pro tour.

With 18 points from this title, Balaji will move upto around 540 in the ATP singles rankings . Hopefully, he will continue to move up in the rankings.

[jaydeep]

Thanks Sameer for starting this thread ... Well deserving one ... From last year he is showing remarkable consistency in his performance.

At $10K India F5 Futures 2012, Chennai (clay)

[R1] (5) N.Sriram Balaji (IND,651) bt Vignesh Peranamallur (IND,954) 76(5) 63
[R2] (5) N.Sriram Balaji (IND,651) bt (Q) Ajai Selvaraj (IND,UNR) 62 76(2)
[QF] (5) N.Sriram Balaji (IND,651) bt (1) Vijayant Malik (IND,469) 16 76(6) 1-0 Retd
[SF] (5) N.Sriram Balaji (IND,651) bt Mark Vervoort (NED,931) 63 16 62

Singles Final
(5) N.Sriram Balaji (IND,651) bt Joss Espasandin (SUI,1094) 63 64

[jaydeep]

Nice article/ small interview of Balaji after his ITF title win.

Tournament win fires up Sriram Balani

''This win has taken the monkey off my back. The title has done my confidence a world of good. I will now be heading to Germany to train under Benjamin Ebrahim Zahid for two weeks. He has had a profound impact on my game. I have made rapid strides in my game and the improvement is there for all to see after I started training under him,” added Balaji.

Dwelling on the objectives he has set for himself, the 22-year-old Balaji nonchalantly said that in the short term he hopes to break into the top 400 of the ATP rankings while in the long run he harbours the ambition of bursting into the top 100.

[vk2052]

I like the confidence. he is a young guy and this win has been a morale booster for him. Hope with good training and financial support from karthi, he would be able to make an impact.

[sameerph]

Balaji is at a career high of 485 this week first time entering top 500 in ATP rankings. It seems like he will play one futures in Germany next week & presumably after that come back to play Tamil Nadu futures series. With not too many points to defend till end of the year, hopefully he will get into top 400 soon & aim at playing some lower level challengers.

[bujilover]

A great break-through for Bala Thanks a lot to the team which supports him and guides him through the training .Expecting the local lad to win his second ITF title in his home tournament next month.Good luck!

[prashanthm]

Great win for Balaji in the Samarkand CH QF against the 8th seed today...
That's 2 back to back top-300 wins and will help him crack the top-400 for the first time.....

SF in his first CH appearance..., Great result...
If he can win this CH title, he will be able to crack the top-300

[vk2052]

Thats what happens when you support your young players. Kudos to Karthi. Chennai is going to rule Indian Tennis soon. Hope other associations learn some thing from Karthi. And now since his father is back as finance minister, no shortage of money for chennai players. Now I hope Karthi hires a good pro coach who can travel with these young boys. They will do even better, if a coach travels with them- Like Yuki is doing great with Aditya Sachdeva.

[suresh]

The thread has his name spelt wrongly* -- it should be Sriram and not Shriram.

* Correct spelling for names is decided by the (named) person.

[jayakris]

Sriram is really coming along very nicely. Excellent work to reach a challenger semifinal abroad. Don't forget that he is only 22. Has a lot of time to keep climbing up and up. Jay

[PKBasu]

Congrats to Sriram Balaji for his excellent show in the Challenger this week, not only making the SF but doing so by beating two top-300 players in succession.

[vidhyashankar]

So finally something to cheer for us amidst all the disappointments from London

[jayakris]

What disappointment? We just picked up the most number of medals we have ever had... What's there to be disappointed about? Ok, that 25% chance for an MxD medal and 35% chance for any tennis medal did not materialize into a real medal - and that is disappointing for a tennis fan, but otherwise, I am quite thrilled at how this OIympics has gone. Showing definite improvement once again from previous Olympics.

Jay

[arjun2761]

Fully agree especially for those who have lived through the dark days of Indian sports! We went through 3 Olympics with zero medals in 1984 (in a smaller field without the Soviet bloc), 1988, and 1992. Inspired by LP's bronze, we became a 1 medal country for the next 3 Olympics in 1996, 2000, and 2004. We finally moved up to a 3 medal performance in 2008 and have topped that this year by at least 1 and perhaps more.

[ihtrak]

Does the total number of medals in contention in each olympics remains constant or is it increasing?