jayakris wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 2:47 pm
^^^ I don't know about Arnav much, but Maya Rajeshwaran does seem to be a very good prospect so far. Enough evidence and eye-witness reports on that so far!
I had commented this on Arnav after his matches in Asia Oceania under 14 team event-
Arnav Paparkar won all 5 of the matches he played and lost only 1 doubles match against Korea. He did play #2 in all but 1 matches and was not played against Japan. Still, winning 5 matches does show some talent.
So, he won all his 5 matches there and 5 matches here. So, would be at least worth keeping an eye on him.
A Southern California girl, listed under India, won a J60 in San Jose, Costa Rica a couple of weeks ago, and it escaped our attention! Krisha Mahendran, born in 2007 who just turned 16 this month. I had seen the name before but had not taken her seriously, so this was really a bit of surprise.
Though she was unseeded at a ranking outside 1000, she went on to upset four players including the third seed in Costa Rica. Her scores:
[R1] d. Calla McGill (USA,1959), 76(1) 62
[R2] d. (3) Nicole Alfaro (CRC,445), 61 63
[QF] d. Ishika Ashar (USA,607), 61 36 61
[SF] d. Kenna Erickson (USA,836), 75 62
[F] Ichino Horikawa (JPN,566) 76(4) 60
She suddenly came up now to #537 in ranking, and is the third highest Indian girl born after 2006 (behind Rishitha Reddy Basireddy at 382 and Ika Raju Kanumuri at 477, but I think Sohini Mohanty will go past her tomorrow with her title at the Indore J60). As she is based in the USA, we can keep some hope that she could turn out to be a good one, though the spurt in her game seems to have come a bit late in age for us to get too excited. She has been in the upper group of USTA rankings for a while, from before Covid in the 12s and 14s too (though not right near the top or anything).
As of now, I would expect her to be recruited by some good US college in a couple of years, but let us see where she gets to! I will try to see if I can catch her in any local Southern California events near me.
That girl 16 year old Krishna Mahendran ( which Jay mentioned in the last post) has won her second title in 3 weeks when she won J60 singles title in Guatemala. Krishna was seeded 4th, won all her matches in straight sets beating 5th seed in QF, top seed in the SF and 3rd seed in the final all quite easily.
I had not even checked the Guatemala J60 draw. I thought no Indian would be there... Nice run again by Krisha. This time she didn't even drop a set in 5 matches. The semifinal upset of a top-200 first seed for a 62 61 score was good to see. Need to see Krisha play in the J100s and J200s to get a sense of how good she is, but she looks good for now.
But Krisha will now move up to around 380 in the junior rankings and will be the second highest ranked Indian born after 2006 behind Rishitha Reddy Basireddy who is a year younger than Krisha.
Yes, it is Krisha, my bad. She is upto 381 in current rankings, she is India # 6 now in ITF junior rankings now but 3 of them above her are in last year of their juniors. So, she is third among those having junior eligibility next year after Shruti and Rishitha Reddy Basireddy.
Krisha is playing the lowly J30 in Guatemala this week. I guess she had entered earlier not expecting to win last week's Guatemala J60 and wanted to get the small points. She has only very few events in the ITF list and has temporary use for even the 20 or 30 pts she can get here as the second seed.
She has started well, "double-breadsticking" and "breadstick-bageling" a Guatemalan and an American player to make the QF
[Update: Krisha lost the QF at the J30. I wonder if it was to get out of Guatemala, as the points were not of much use anymore, and she was not playing further events there or anywhere nearby!]
A few of our top juniors are at the J200 in Nonthaburi this week. Yuvan Nandal, Aditya Govila, Daksh Prasad, Hitesh Chauhan, and Cahir Warik on the boys' side (the cut was around #250 junior rank). Shruti Alhawat and Sohini Sanjay Mohanty are in the girls' main draw. Sohini, who is only 14, made it in as a lucky loser, after being the 7th seed and losing the Q3 against a Chinese girl who had upset the qualies first seed earlier.
Yuvan is the 5th seed and Shruti is the 7th seed, both with first round byes in the 48-player draws. Everybody else play unseeded players in the first round.
Aditya and Daksh beat Thai wildcards in easy straight sets, but Cahir Warik was upset by a Thai wildcard, and 14 year old Hitesh Chauhan (IND,238) lost to a similarly ranked but older player Joaquin Guilleme (Nicaragua,255) in a tough 62 67 46 match. On the girls' side, 466th ranked lucky loser 14 year old Sohini Sanjay Mohanty lost to 2-year older Sue Yan Tan (SGP,269) after some resistance, 16 75 06.
So, Yuvan, Aditya and Daksh are in the final-32 on the boys' side and Shruti on the girls' side.
Oh crap. Shruti retired at 4-6 in her R2 first match against qualifier Zhang-Qian Wei (CHN,569). She had some illness or injury issue in August last year and has not looked good ever since. After a long break, I was hoping she would be back. Not so
5th seed Yuvan Nandan (IND,60) beat the 9th seed Reia Hattori (JPN,94) 62 63 to make the QF at the Nonthaburi J200. The next match will be very tough, as he is going against the top seed and world #7 Yi Zhou of China.
Good luck to Yuvan! Looks like he lost to the same Chinese last year in the same tournament in the 3rd round (in 3 sets), so hopefully he can turn around that result this time.
He has had some close games against top-10 players and has it in him to beat them if he keeps his emotions in check and don't go for too much with aggression (my impression from seeing one match against Campana Lee last year). Let us see. Yuvan is certainly showing good consistency and has potential. This is like home court for him, as he has been in Nonthaburi and gets coached there (iirc).
He is the same Chinese whom Manas ran close and lost to in 3 sets at Australian open juniors in the match I saw. In fact Manas had a bad case of cramps in third set, else he could have beaten him.
