Manas Dhamne thread

[jayakris]

Manas gets back to the junior circuit in 2 weeks time at the J200 (grade 2) at Cap d'Ail, France (clay) starting on April 3rd. Currently 6th in the entry list there. [As reported in other threads, he is playing the Monastir M15 with main draw junior exempt direct entry for this week and the next. This week's R1 is on Wednesday]

Good to see that he will be back soon on the junior circuit too. Need to bring that ranking back up from 75 to inside top-50 for grand slam junior direct entries.

[sameerph]

Manas lost 36 06 against 874th ranked Frenchman Aubriot. That looks a bad loss.

[jayakris]

Argh... I continue to be unconvinced by these European academies (or any academies, except maybe Stephen Koon's in Thailand for the time being, till I add them also to my "unconvinced" list). But it is early. Hope things will get better. It is not like we have a choice and have academies in India anyway

[Does anybody know if Manas has one of his parents, maybe mother Nikita Dhamne, with him at the academy? She was with him on some trips earlier. It would be very good for youngsters at his age who start getting into losing streaks on the tour to have family with them]

Manas is on a 1-9 streak right now in the latest 5 junior matches and 5 pro matches ... 10 competitive matches are all he has played since October, officially. The lone win was against the #110 Aussie wildcard Jeremy Zhang at the AO juniors. Hope things will turn around soon and he won't lose confidence.

[PKBasu]

BOTH his parents gave up their careers to focus on his tennis. That, I think, is wildly excessive. At least one parent should have continued working, not to put undue pressure on the kid -- who will be the main bread-winner for his family, a pretty scary burden for a 14 year old, especially in a sport that is injury-riddled.

OK, scratch that! I'm told that I have this story wrong: it is Vedant Mohan, the younger player based in Spain, whose parents were based in Oman (father an airline pilot) and gave everything up to pursue their son's tennis career. Not the case with Manas apparently...

[jayakris]

^^^ Yes, that is Vedant Mohan. But it wasn't exactly quitting the jobs. I think the Covid period caused some airline layoffs in the Gulf and the dad lost his pilot job at Oman air, so they decided to take off to Spain and not waste time. They reportedly lost all their personal savings, so a bold decision. Dad Dhruv Mohan's linkedin page says that he was back at his pilot job at Oman air later though, so it must have been a temporary period without a job. Vedant does seem to be very talented, having won some top u10 events in Europe. We need to wait 2 or 3 years and see how tall and strong he becomes before deciding how good he can be. He is lefty.

By the way, Vedant has a Malayali mom, Anisha Nair. I am actually not sure of his dad, but I think he is also Malayali. Both had military parent background, and they grew up outside Kerala. But Vedant was in Thiruvananthapuram recently for some tennis court inauguration or something and he even played a couple of exhibition points with the Thiruvananthapuram MP, Shashi Tharoor! So the boy is being taken note of, by everybody.

[gbelday]

[Does anybody know if Manas has one of his parents, maybe mother Nikita Dhamne, with him at the academy? She was with him on some trips earlier. It would be very good for youngsters at his age who start getting into losing streaks on the tour to have family with them]

Yes, his mom stays with him in Bordighera. His dad Manoj visits him often (a few times a year.). This was as of last summer when we went with the boys for two weeks. Really nice family, very friendly. Bordighera Is beautiful and super hilly. The first day we were there, his mom came to the academy on one of those motorized scooters

[jayakris]

That is good to know. If the mom is there with him, things should be fine even if he is going through a bad patch in his matches lately (generally speaking, from knowing how youngsters at that age are!)

[sameerph]

The guy who beat Manas in R1 in Tunisia has gone on to reach SF beating 4th seed and guy who upset 6th seed in next 2 rounds.

I know I am going to get brickbats after posting this.

But point is Manas did not lose to a totally talentless player

[arjun2761]

I have to say Manas' results thus far have been underwhelming at least if viewed from the lens of a phenom. Otherwise, he is still very young and may turn out to be a very good player by Indian standards (i.e., top 200 level) with normal development.

That said, the people close to him are treating him as a phenom (for example, giving him a WC to a home ATP event when he can't win a round in the qualies of the lowest level futures), so perhaps they are seeing something which the results don't indicate yet.

[arjun2761]

The guy who beat Manas in R1 in Tunisia has gone on to reach SF beating 4th seed and guy who upset 6th seed in next 2 rounds.

I know I am going to get brickbats after posting this.

But point is Manas did not lose to a totally talentless player

I think the brick bats are going be earned on this post. He got thrashed by his opponent (including a bagel), so this isn't a case of running into a hot player but for which he would have gone deep. In this case, if his opponent had retired, he would likely have gotten thrashed in the next round.

[sameerph]

I have to say Manas' results thus far have been underwhelming at least if viewed from the lens of a phenom. Otherwise, he is still very young and may turn out to be a very good player by Indian standards (i.e., top 200 level) with normal development.

That said, the people close to him are treating him as a phenom (for example, giving him a WC to a home ATP event when he can't win a round in the qualies of the lowest level futures), so perhaps they are seeing something which the results don't indicate yet.

Maybe underwhelming if viewed from the lens of a phenom. But, he had a great start to his junior career from Indian standpoint winning a J2 title when he was just past 14 and winning an Asian junior title when he was still not 15. As good results as were of our best juniors in last few years- Yuki and Sumit. It is in the past few months that his progress in terms of results seem to have halted.

Hopefully, it is a temporary lull and he will start producing results at higher level of juniors and pros soon.

[jayakris]

Manas lost today in the R1 at Monastir M15 (he had another junior exempt entry) to a qualifier Alexandre Reco (FRA,564), 26 57.

[arjun2761]

Actually somewhat encouraged that he was semi competitive against a top 600 opponent. He is still very young and probably need to be competitive against the top juniors over the next year or so before we can expect him to win matches at the men’s events.

[jayakris]

Yeah. He better get on the junior circuit and pick up some wins. Losing so many matches in a row can ruin a kid's confidence. Anyway, he is finally back on the junior tour next week at the Cap D'ail J200 (Grade 2) in France. He should be a 7th or 8th seed there.

[Atithee]

There’s a saying in Hindi, which roughly translates to, “a talented kid’s feet show in the crib itself.”

I’m not seeing that in Manas yet.