[Tennis] Misc. Results for Indians abroad...

[sameerph]

Zeel is thru to the SF with a straight sets win.

At Monastir W15, Tunisia

[QF] (4) Zeel Desai (IND,686) d. Anja Wildgruber (GER,797) 76(3) 63

Next,

[SF] (4) Zeel Desai (IND,686) vs. (2) Oana Gavrila (ROU,547)

Gavrila reached the final last week here.

[jayakris]

[SF] (4) Zeel Desai (IND,686) d. (2) Oana Gavrila (ROU,547), 64 61
so
[F] (4) Zeel Desai (IND,686) vs (1) Hina Inoue (USA,503)

Finally a solid run by Zeel!! Starting to play well again?

[Dinesh]

Zeel has her own thread, FYI!

[jayakris]

^^ Sure, but this thread has been mostly a Monastir thread lately (as we never made a tournament thread for the Monastir events that are year-round). Like we do when somebody wins a title or gets to a final (sometimes), we will transfer the scores from a tournament thread to the player thread at the end for the record. Hope she wins this. She badly needs points, even if W15 events give only very few.

[sameerph]

Yes, next year we can have a year round tournament thread for Tunisia in tournaments as lot of our tennis players play there these days.

Zeel went on to win the title.

At Monastir W15, Tunisia

[F] (4) Zeel Desai (IND,686) d (1) Hina Inoue (USA,503) 62 64

I will put summary in Zeel's thread.

[Dinesh]

23 yo Dhakshineswar Suresh is having a surprising week at the M15 Winston-Salem ITF. With a main draw wildcard, he beat 3 opponents in the main draw to reach the semifinal stage.

Not sure how he was awarded the wildcard but he plays for Georgia Gwinnett College at the NAIA level (alongside compatriot Paras Dahiya) and might have known connections? I do not know much about this organization or have heard of any famous players having emerged from there but I want to say it’s equivalent to NCAA D3 level (?!).

R1: (WC) Dhakshineswar Suresh (NR) 6-2 7-5 Vladislav Melnic (ROU,1395)
R2: (WC) Dhakshineswar Suresh (NR) 7-5 6-4 Holden Koons (USA,NR)
QF: (WC) Dhakshineswar Suresh (NR) 6-2 3-6 6-1 Robin Catry (FRA, 1011)
SF: (WC) Dhakshineswar Suresh (NR) vs (1) Pedro Rodenas (ESP, 613)

[prasen9]

We always knew the God of the South, Suresh, had it in him to do great things beyond what he already does in Chennai. Now the world is seeing his calibre! All that long-distance running helped him no doubt.

[Dinesh]

Dhakahineswar is in the finals

M15 Winston-Salem ITF:

SF: (WC) Dhakshineswar Suresh (NR) 6-7 7-6 6-0 (1) Pedro Rodenas (ESP, 613)

In the final round, he plays the second seed, 22yo Garrett Johns (ATP #640).

[jayakris]

What a totally unexpected run!

[Omkara]

What a totally unexpected run!

This is his first tournament since Jun'22

[sameerph]

23 yo Dhakshineswar Suresh is having a surprising week at the M15 Winston-Salem ITF. With a main draw wildcard, he beat 3 opponents in the main draw to reach the semifinal stage.

Not sure how he was awarded the wildcard but he plays for Georgia Gwinnett College at the NAIA level (alongside compatriot Paras Dahiya) and might have known connections? I

He has joined Wake Forest University this year. That is why this wild card. I think Wake Forest is quite a good program in NCAA division 1.

[jayakris]

Crazy story, really. Out of the blue. So I went back and looked at ITF records. It seems he stopped playing juniors after turning 16 in 2016, though he had reached two J60 finasl in India and won the second one. Inexplicably, he went on to only try ITF pro events after that in 2017 and 2018. Naturally, he had a long streak of losses (and also one win against Sid Rawat, which is notable at that age!). And then he disappeared in 2019... Then there was Covid and he took off to the US later. Small college in NAIA, where he went undefeated. He then transferred to Wake Forest Univ this year.

He won the first set 62 in the final against the second seed Garrett Johns (USA,640) but something seems to have gone wrong, as he won only 4 points out of 28 in the second set. 62 06 00 now

Edit:
[F] (WC) Dakshineswar Suresh (IND,NR) l. (2) Garrett Johns (USA,640), 62 06 06

[gunsnroses]

DK (as he is popularly called) played at M15 New Delhi in 2022. He reached the QFs (his first) after coming through the qualies. Kind of surprised everyone there as well. He was coached by the well know Rajiv Vijaykumar and Somdev Devvarman. He still trains at Aspire High Performance Tennis Program at IIT Madras during his off-season.

[arjun2761]

Johns and the guy Suresh beat in the SFs were top 20 type collegiate players last year. So, Suresh should be a top collegiate player this year based on these results. However, at 23 years old, he is pretty old to be playing college tennis.

[sameerph]

Yes, Johns won a M15 title the week before as well and also has challenger main draw wins this year. The opponent he beat in the SF, Rodenas won a M25 title this year. So, both are clear top 400-500 level players and Suresh seems to be playing at that level this week. This in current Indian singles context is significant as we have only 3 players ranked in top 500 currently.

Hope he gets to play some good opposition this year in college tennis with Wake Forest and his game further improves to top 300 or so level soon which he seems to have potential for. ( based on this 1 week).