Wimbledon 2019

[jayakris]

Go RamK!!!!

[Omkara]

Go RamK!!!!

[PKBasu]

[Q1] Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND, 154) d. Lukas Lacko (SVK, 144) 63 62

What a win! Lacko beat Dustin Brown (the grass monster) at Surbiton, where he made the QF this year, so he was in excellent grass-court form. But Ramkumar is a serious professional; after his disappointing results on grass, he decided to take a week off, and worked hard on his game. And here are the results!

I presume Saketh too went away and worked on his game, and his performance today against an experienced campaigner was pretty darned good, albeit a disappointing final outcome:

[Q1] Saketh Myneni (IND, 229) l. Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (ESP, 152) 46 64 57

Garcia-Lopez is a tour veteran, with a career-high ranking of 23, and is still ranked quite a bit above Saketh. So I'd take the positives from this strong performance by Saketh today.

[Sin Hombre]

Not a good time to be a Slovak playing an Indian.

[PKBasu]

Ankita plays Cagla Buyukakcay of Turkey in Q1. Great! Ankita has a 2-0 record against her, having beaten her most recently at the the Singapore ITF on he way to the title!

[Prashant]

This is a legit surprising and excellent win for RamK. Here's hoping he's back to somewhere near peak form...

[jaydeep]

A good comfortable win for Ram against a decent grass-court player.
Next, he is facing a Polish, Kamil Majchrzak.

[Q2] Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND,154) vs (11) Kamil Majchrzak (POL,111)

[sameerph]

Excellent unexpected win by RamK. Unfortunate that Saketh could not pull off the win after a very good performance. That would have made a perfect day for us ( with Prajnesh's win at Antalya). But, hope Saketh gets some confidence from this performance and he gets back to his previous top 150-200 level soon.

Majchrzak reached the SF at tough Ilkely challenger last week with wins over Vesely and Sugita. RamK lost to him early this year at Anning on clay. So, it is another tough one for RamK.

[PKBasu]

Ankita's section of the women's qualifying draw:

15-Varvara Lepchenko (USA) vs Sofya Zhuk (RUS)
Fang-ying Xun (CHN) vs Lesley Kherkove (NED
Cagla Buyukakcay (TUR) vs Ankita Raina (IND)
27-Timea Babos (HUN) vs WC-Sabine Lisicki (GER)

Ankita beat Buyukakcay 63 62 in Singapore, and won a 3-set humdinger in Istanbul last year. 2-0 for Ankita, which means it's a pretty good draw. And there is a chance that she could play Lisicki again, having beaten the former Wimbledon finalist on grass earlier this month! But first Lisicki needs to beat the former world #1 doubles player.

[S_K_S]

Ankita is 2nd match after a 11.30 start. 1st match is a ladies match. No RK on the schedule for today.

[sameerph]

Ankita wins the first set 6-4 against Cagla. Only 1 break of serve in that set.

[PKBasu]

Ankita is up 6-4, 2-0 now against Buyukakcay.

[Tolamu]

And wins in style 6-4 6-3.

[S_K_S]

Woohoo! Come on! 2nd round against Lisicki.

[PKBasu]

Nice and easy win for Ankita. And she plays the former Wimbledon finalist in Q2 in what will surely be a blockbuster match.