jayakris wrote: ↑Mon Oct 31, 2022 6:50 pm
Sports-india's own 16 year old Rohan Belday had a wildcard to the M15 at Ithaca,NY, USA today... He went down to a 19 year old Indian-American Aman Sharma (USA,1566), 36 06... Don't feel too bad; just your first match in the pros (I think). Better results in the future, Rohan!
Rohan is now #327 in the junior ranking, and I think he probably would have made the Indian u16 junior Davis Cup world-16 team, if he were an Indian citizen!
Thanks a lot, Jay!! Yes, this was Rohan’s first pro match and thanks to USTA for the WC. Aman plays for Cornell and the tournament was on Cornell campus. Pretty solid player and a really nice kid. Rohan played well but it’s a different ball game against these older kids. Lots of positives but needs to hit a bigger/heavier ball and use his legs more. He found it difficult executing on the run shots. Needs to be more fit and explosive to compete at this level. Unlike in juniors, these kids really take advantage of the short ball. The 3 year age gap showed but there’s a lot to learn from these matches.
I saw Siddanth Bhantia there. He won his match today. We left after Rohan finished his match and didn’t stay around to talk to him. I watched him hitting for a bit yesterday with his team but couldn’t meet him.
Yes, you need a lot of strength development (core strength, I guess) for those running shots to have depth. Learning process! Good that he got that first match out of the way though and has identified items to work on.
Lots of Indians these days in the US events. I think 4 seeds in the qualies at Ithaca were Indian-american kids. I see a lot of Indian names all over the place. In USA, Australia, UK, etc. We are becoming pretty good!!
jayakris wrote: ↑Tue Nov 01, 2022 4:24 am
Lots of Indians these days in the US events. I think 4 seeds in the qualies at Ithaca were Indian-american kids. I see a lot of Indian names all over the place.
Yes, even in the juniors. It’s so good to see that. Out of the 4 players in qualies at Ithaca, Ishaan plays for Columbia and the rest for Cornell.
18 year old Nishesh Basavreddy is really showing he is ready for pro tour now. Reached the QF's last week at Tuburon Challenger and this week has reached the SF at Fairfield challenger upsetting 6th seed Adam Walton (AUS,199) in first round and 19 year old talented American Alex Michelsen (USA,110) in the QF both in straight sets. Michelsen is third highest ranked under 20 player in the world right now. So, this is impressive win for Nishesh.
In the SF, he will play Steve Johnson whom he beat in Chicago Challenger earlier this year.
Basavareddy beats Steve Johnson to make the finals of the Fairfield challenger. Now he needs to reverse his previous weeks loss to rising 20 year old Zachary Svajda who has won 2 of the 3 previous challengers he’s played in.
Nishesh lost 46 16 in the final. He has moved up inside top 500 at #498 in the rankings with points from only 4 tournaments. He is now one of the top 7-8 players in world below 19 years of age.
Nishesh Basavareddy makes the QF of the Knoxville CH beating #195 Zhukayev in straight sets. He is now 8-2 in his last 10 challenger main draw matches so he is now one of the better players at the challenger level. Up next is another promising youngster, #114 Michelson, whom he beat a couple of weeks ago.
BTW, Zhukayev (UZB) is coming off a challenger title last week but was beaten by the now in-form Sumit Nagal in the Asian Games.
