$125K ATP Challenger, Helsinki (Indoor Hard) - Nov 2023

[arjun2761]

Another decisive win for Sumit! Hope he can close the deal in the finals. This has been a real breakout tournament for him on a slower hard court after his win at Bangalore which is also a slower hard court.

Congrats to Balaji also for the win and he is now getting into ATP range for doubles. His partner, Begeman is considerably lower ranked than him even though they are playing very well together, so he'll have to figure out that transition.

[Sanjay]

haha I was wondering where the hell my posts went!

I assume you are still holding your breath, and did not laugh out, "haha"

Well, It was more like "wtf??"

Next week is the Champaign Challenger. Last year my son was ballboy there to Ben Shelton and Gunneswaran. He enjoyed it and showed up on Challenger TV also, I had posted here. This year he isn't interested too much, no good players. Just the one I can recognize is Kudla.

[sameerph]

Sumit lost the first set 3-6.

Moutet is playing consistent tennis not giving any free points to Sumit and that is making Sumit make more errors that usual.

[Omkara]

Sumit breaks back to move up 4-2 in set 2

[sameerph]

Sumit takes the second set 6-3. He was 0-2 down early in that set and at that point it looked like Moutet was all ready to to dominate the match but Sumit came back strongly to win 6 of the next 7 games.

[sameerph]

Damn, from 2-0 up in third set, Sumit loses 3 straight games to go a break down 2-3. As of now, third set looks like a reverse of second set, hope Sumit can get back from here.

[sameerph]

Sumit lost 6 straight games from 2-0 up in third set.

[F] (ALT) Sumit Nagal (IND,169) l. Contantin Moutet (FRA,173) 36 63 26

[Sanjay]

Yikes, just checked the score. What happened??

[prasen9]

He lost. A few descriptions of the match are above.

[PKBasu]

Up and down -- seemingly inconsistent -- match in the final against a player who was ranked 51 in singles exactly a year ago.
But this has been an excellent week for Sumit in Finland. In the QF, he beat the local hero who had decimated us in the Davis Cup, is still ranked 69 in singles and has a career high of 37. And then he had a straight-sets win in the SF over Travaglia, who was ranked 60 in singles just a couple of years ago.

And of course it was wonderful to have 3 Indians out of 4 players on either side of the net in the doubles final. The half-Indian pair of Balaji/Begemann beat VSP/Jeevan in the end. Balaji moves up to a new career high of 71 in doubles, while VSP is also at a new career high of 92, and Anirudh at a NCH of 87. Jeevan is 93, Saketh has slipped to 96, and Arjun Kadhe has equalled his career-high doubles rank of 107.

[jayakris]

Sumit is playing pretty much top-100 tennis. I mean, worthy of squeezing into top-100. He may get there in the upcoming months if he stays injury free.