ITF W60/W25 N.America, Jun/Jul 2023

[PKBasu]

[F] 3-Karman Kaur Thandi (IND, 261) d. 4-Yulia Starodubtsewa (UKR, 294) 75 46 61

Inching towards the title: Karman leads 4-1 in the final set.
And she breaks for 5-1. One more game now!! Karman serving for the match. 30-all, 40-30 (MP), TITLE!!

[Prem]

ITF USA 36A

[F] 3-Karman Kaur Thandi (IND, 261) bt. 4-Yulia Starodubtsewa (UKR, 294) 7-5 4-6 6-1

Excellent win for KKT

[Dinesh]

what a dream week in singles for us!

[Atithee]

Attagirl!

[PKBasu]

Terrific week in tennis: a Challenger title for Sumit Nagal, and a W60 singles title for Karman Kaur Thandi!!

Plus in golf, Subhankar Sharma finished T8 in The (British) Open Championships, easily the best-ever Indian performance there, and only the 3rd time an Indian has finished in the top-10 in a golf major.

[SaniaFan]

What is the prize money for this win?

[suresh]

Congratulations KKT.

[arjun2761]

Congrats to KKT for this win! Hope she makes it into the US Open qualies with Ankita and Sumit. She is 210 in the live rankings, so should be in unless she is defending significant points next week.

[Omkara]

What a week for us. Feeling proud.

[sameerph]

What is the prize money for this win?

Close to $9,000 for the winner. Sumit got close to 10,000 for this title. Not really significant but will help ease out some expense burden on them.

[jayakris]

At the Dallas W60 (Hard):

[Q1] (8) Sahaja Yamalapalli (IND) vs (WC) Ellie Douglas (USA,NR)

Ellie was ranked at a career high of #319 just a year ago in July but is unranked now. Not sure what her story is... A Q1 loss last weekend at Evansville was her first match in a year. I assume she was injured, had surgery or something, so she is keeping her injury-protected entries for later and playing qualies to get back into playing shape?

[vatsalnew]

At the Dallas W60 (Hard):

[Q1] (8) Sahaja Yamalapalli (IND) vs (WC) Ellie Douglas (USA,NR)

Ellie was ranked at a career high of #319 just a year ago in July but is unranked now. Not sure what her story is... A Q1 loss last weekend at Evansville was her first match in a year. I assume she was injured, had surgery or something, so she is keeping her injury-protected entries for later and playing qualies to get back into playing shape?

I hope Karman's win last week inspires Sahaja and the other women's players as well.

Karman is closing in on Ankita' to be India #1 (#210 vs #200), so hopefully that inspires Ankita too.

[VReddy]

These USA ITFs are generally though around this time as it is College break and so lot of College Tennis biggies are lurking in the draws, whose WTA rank is mis-representative. Ellie Douglas, as Jay has mentioned, has been Indian Wells U18 finalist and top-320 WTA player.

If Sahaja overcomes that, then likely next up is Reese Brantmeier who has a higher UTR than Karman!

[Dinesh]

At the Dallas W60 (Hard):

[Q1] (8) Sahaja Yamalapalli (IND,426) 2-6 1-6 (WC) Ellie Douglas (USA,NR)

Zero aces and 9 doubles faults will do that to you

[jayakris]

^^^ Saw the match. It was one mistake after another after another. Not sure what was wrong with her today. But whenever she hit some of her shots, it was often jaw-dropping. I noticed a couple of low balls she took today by properly bending her knees (something a lot of Indian players have trouble with) and hit across with punch on the BH side. That looked new to me. A couple of net-hugger running FH retrieval shots too. The power she can generate is still impressive on some of the shots on both the FH and BH side. I think I saw one Sania-style BHCC too, which I see only Sahaja hit properly among Indians.

But then, none of that matters much. What do we do about getting her to cut down on the errors? At 26 02, I think she served three DFs in a row. But it was not just the DFs; there were plenty of wild (I mean totally wild) shots today into the net or way outside the lines. She can't win if she plays like that.