Sahaja Yamalapalli thread

[sameerph]

Sahaja meets a fellow qualifier in first round.

At ITF W100 Charleston, SC, USA (Green Clay)

[R1] (Q) Sahaja Yamlapalli (IND,423) vs. (Q) DJ Bennett (USA,789)

[jayakris]

[R1] (Q) Sahaja Yamlapalli (IND,423) d. (Q) DJ Bennett (USA,789), 64 60

[sameerph]

She will play the fifth seed next.

At ITF W100 Charleston, SC, USA (Green Clay)

[R2] (Q) Sahaja Yamlapalli (IND,423) vs. (5) Elizabeth Mandlik (USA,127)

[Omkara]

While all wins are against lower ranked players, i feel these are decent results. Real challenge going ahead. She should put up a good fight

[jayakris]

[R2] (Q) Sahaja Yamlapalli (IND,423) l. (5) Elizabeth Mandlik (USA,127), 36 06

[arjun2761]

^^^^ Mandlik had the gene advantage being the daughter of a 4 time GS singles champion!

[sameerph]

Yes, Sahaja is still not at the level to upset these players close to top 100. Hopefully, she will get there with more matches at this level. She is now upto # 387 in live rankings, close to her career high rankings of #380. Still has 15 points to defend this year, she will play W25 in Austin, Texas next week.

[PKBasu]

^^^^ Mandlik had the gene advantage being the daughter of a 4 time GS singles champion!

Oh wow, I wonder why she didn't keep her mother's full surname of Mandlikova -- her grandfather (Hana's father) was an Olympics sprinter, and had the Mandlik surname. Apparently her biological father was a friend of Hana's who had agreed to have no role in parenting the twins, and they were brought up with another male partner of Hana's .

[jayakris]

^^^ Adding the "ova" for females is a language/culture thing, and the family name of Mandlikova is actually Mandlik (as in the grandfather name), right? She must have decided to stick with the American/English tradition of not changing the family name for females, I assume.

[suresh]

Doesn't the suffix ova mean "daughter of"? It makes sense that Hana dropped it in her daughter's surname.

[Dinesh]

Sahaja fails to capitalize on a weaker opening round at the W25 Austin, Texas event.

R1 Sahaja Yamalapalli (387) 6-3 4-6 4-6 Mary Stoiana (USA,591)

She is skipping the W25 Bengaluru event that starts next week and hasn’t entered anywhere else either.

[VReddy]

Sahaja fails to capitalize on a weaker opening round

Opponent is currently the No. 1 ranked singles player in the College Tennis rankings: https://12thman.com/news/2023/11/15/wom ... kings.aspx

[sameerph]

Sahaja got her career best win against a top 200 player and won her third ITF title this week in Solapur.

These are her results this week-

At Solapur W25, India (Hard)

[R1] Sahaja Yamlapalli (IND,412) d. Smriti Bhasin (IND,1027) 62 62
[R2] Sahaja Yamlapalli (IND,412) d.Madhurima Sawant (IND,NR) 63 60
[QF] Sahaja Yamlapalli (IND,412) d. Hiromi Abe (JPN,857) 63 62
[SF] Sahaja Yamlapalli (IND,412) d. Saki Imamura (JPN,567) 76(3) 62
[F] Sahaja Yamlapalli (IND,412) d. (2) Ekaterina Makarova (RUS,186) 64 63

With those 50 points from this title, Sahaja will move up to 189 points and career high ranking of around #340 on January rankings.

She can add to those points next week in Navi Mumbai W40. A QF or better next week can move Sahaja ahead of both Karman and Rutuja to India #2.

[Omkara]

Beating wr 186 is no joke. I was going through her results past her breakthrough performance last year. She did well in India but her performance in US was below par. She even had a one sided loss to someone ranked ~125.

Seeing her dominate here feels good. We have had loads of players who did well in one tournament and then never after, either in India or abroad. So by winning here and within 12-18 months, she broke the jinx. It shows she is trying to improve her game. Lot of our players have got stuck in the 400-700 rank zone. Rutuja took years to get out. I hope there is a team helping her.

[jayakris]

^^^ Sahaja still needs help financially to survive on the tour and improve. For good news, I was told that she did get some coaching tips from veteran coach Ashley Hobson in Bradenton, Florida recently. The double fault issue was probably fixed with his help.