jayakris wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 5:47 pm
Sumit was actually in Canada with Bobby Mahal (with Mahesh"s support) for a good enough period before that too, so he did get some good hands-on coaching. He showed results too when he went inside top-125 and took a set off Federer at the US Open and all that. But now he is in a slump after the surgery and has to climb out of it himself. Some traveling coach could help him (I assume he doesn't have one?).
Yea Jay. That’s correct. Bobby did help Sumit and Karman a lot when they were young. I met Bobby a few times (most recently had dinner with him and Sachin Kirtane during USO) and we still keep in touch. He runs the Advantage Tennis in Toronto area. He’s organizing a J2 in his club in the first week of April again.
He showed me videos of Sumit playing with Shapo and Karman beating up Bianca in practice when he was training them. That’s where the Shapo-Bops connection originated. Bops is still very invested in Sumit’s career but not sure if he helps out financially. I am not sure if Mahesh is still involved.
Atithee - Manas got full support from IMG after he won the Eddie Herr at 12. Jerry won almost all junior USTA tournaments that he played as a junior (clays, hards. Winters etc). I don’t think Yuki spent more than a few weeks at a time at IMG (Bolittieri back then). I am actually curious to know if he was offered a full time scholarship after winning the Aussie Open juniors because IMG tends to do that (i.e., go after winners).
potos wrote: Fri Sep 16, 2022 9:04 pm
I am too young for Ramesh’ era, unfortunately.
As for the Filipino-Americans, they were recruited to mask the failures. It started with Cecil Mamiit and Eric Taino, but they only accepted when they were already past their prime. Treat Huey and fellow doubles specialist Ruben Gonzales were next. But to be fair to both, they did not need a lot of recruiting. Fil-German Katharina Lehnert was also recruited for the women’s side although she retired quite early.
The current crop of good Filipino-foreign tennis players haven’t really shown any desire to represent Philippines. Desirae Krawczyk, Angela Kulikov, and Sabrina Santamaria are all in doubles top 100. Of course, Leylah Fernandez will never even consider. Lol! And then there are the likes of Lizette Cabrera, Jason Kubler and James McCabe in Australia. My hopes are high on US NCAA standout Eryn Cayetano to eventually shift to Philippines though since she is extremely proud to represent her culture. And that should encapsulate how broken Philippine tennis is, that an avid follower like me even have to hope for someone from another country’s tennis system to shift allegiance just for some semblance of competitiveness. Good thing Alex Eala came along, thanks to her family being rich and Rafa Nadal Academy for nurturing the talent.
@potos Watching Desirae Krawczyk today, I was struck by how Filipina she looked, although her dad is Polish, mom Filipina. There are a lot of half-Filipino/a players (who I have bolded above). Treat Huey I always thought was pure Filipino, but you're right that he was Filipino-American. There are 4.2 million Filipino-Americans, and many more half-Filipinos in America -- a pretty high proportion of the Philippines' population, so your situation is somewhat unique. No other Asian nation was colonized by America, and the Philippines had exactly the same status (during the American occupation) as Puerto Rico has now. So the situation is not entirely comparable with other Asian countries. (To be continued...).
Yes Filipinos have a strong Tennis connection, having noticed it first when Zeeshan Ali was top 5 junior in the world while world #1 junior was Felix Barrientos of the Philippines.
The names mentioned in the above list are all well known Filipino's or with Filipino connections, but to add to the list is a top 20/30 world Junior ,Canadian Jayden Weeks who also is 1200 on the ATP, and like Desirae Krawczyk his mother is a Filipino Nurse.
But one conspicuous change which I have noticed is about MacKenzie Mcdonald who beat Nadal last week ,until few years his bio mentioned Scottish father and American born mother to Filipino parents , but now it has been surprisingly revised every where to Chinese ancestry, now it is quite common for many philipinos to have Chinese ancestry ,but her(mother) features resemble more of a Filipino rather than a Chinese.
Rajiv wrote: Mon Jan 16, 2023 7:04 am
17 year Chinese Shang Juncheng a teenage qualifier and one of youngest player in the Mens Draw Teenager created a slice of history on Monday in becoming the first male Chinese player to win an Australian Open main draw singles match.
He beat the experienced 74th ranked German Oscar Otte in a intense 3 hours of grueling 4 sets of tennis in the Australian heat, which only shows how a young teenager 17 yr old has the perfect physical attributes required by a player for the tour even at this young tender age ,while our highly feted ,pampered stars like Sumit allegedly was exhausted yesterday in his ignonimous loss.
I see this as a very significant result for Chinese Men's Tennis and envisage a lot of positive changes in the future with both the association and the players doing their intended tasks.
Chinese mens tennis continues to grow fast.
Yesterday, at Madrid Masters their #2 Zizhen Zhang beat Dennis Shapvovalov to make it to third round.
Today, 21 year old Bu Yunchaokete won his first challenger title at Seoul.
China now have 2 players in top 100- Yibing Wu (54) and Zhizhen Zhang (94) and 2 more in 100-200 bracket - Bu Yunchaokete ( now 167) and Junchen Shang (190).
Incredible run at Miami by 19 year old Pilipino Alexandra Ela. She beat Ostapenko in second round, Australian open champion Medison Keys in third round and now world #2 Iga Swiatech in the QF to reach the SF.
Looks like she is an amazing talent and trains at Rafa Nadal academy since last 5-6 years. I think first one from Philippines to do come up to this level in Tennis.
Also a nice run by HKG Coleman Wong who made the 3rd round after upsetting Ben Shelton. We are now beginning to see more Asian players near the top outside of the Chinese women who have been good for a while.
sameerph wrote: Wed Mar 26, 2025 6:59 pm
Incredible run at Miami by 19 year old Pilipino Alexandra Ela. She beat Ostapenko in second round, Australian open champion Medison Keys in third round and now world #2 Iga Swiatech in the QF to reach the SF.
Looks like she is an amazing talent and trains at Rafa Nadal academy since last 5-6 years. I think first one from Philippines to do come up to this level in Tennis.
Yes, truly an incredible run by Alexandra Eala of the Philippines to beat Ostapenko (ex FO champ), Keys (AO holder) and Swiatek (FO holder) at the Miami Masters (which used to be known as the Fifth Slam when it was played at Key Biscayne). We have been paying attention to her ever since she won the AO junior doubles title in 2020, then won the FO junior doubles in 2021 and -- the biggie -- the US Open junior singles in 2022.
I remember our Filipino friend coming in to tell us more about her. Alexandra is a cousin of the Ayalas -- the wealthiest family in the Philippines, who are of ethnic-Spanish descent -- and her mother is a leading telecom executive. So she is wealthy, but she is the first of the south-east Asian junior Slam title-winners to translate that into such a terrific run in a significant pro event.
Incidentally, when Alexandra Eala won the AO junior doubles title in 2020, her partner was Priska Madelyn Nugroho -- who last week partnered Ankita Raina to a doubles title in Jinan, China. Nugroho doesn't play doubles that regularly, but she clearly has some innate ability in doubles!
PKBasu wrote: Fri Mar 28, 2025 7:07 am
Yes, truly an incredible run by Alexandra Eala of the Philippines to beat Ostapenko (ex FO champ), Keys (AO holder) and Swiatek (FO holder) at the Miami Masters (which used to be known as the Fifth Slam when it was played at Key Biscayne). We have been paying attention to her ever since she won the AO junior doubles title in 2020, then won the FO junior doubles in 2021 and -- the biggie -- the US Open junior singles in 2022.
I remember our Filipino friend coming in to tell us more about her. Alexandra is a cousin of the Ayalas -- the wealthiest family in the Philippines, who are of ethnic-Spanish descent -- and her mother is a leading telecom executive. So she is wealthy, but she is the first of the south-east Asian junior Slam title-winners to translate that into such a terrific run in a significant pro event.
I was actually not sure if they are related to the Ayalas, it was just interesting that her family is almost always connected to Ayala companies. Even her 2 biggest sponsors, Globe and BPI, are Ayala companies. Hopefully, her Miami run is no fluke. Her serve continues to be awful. There were clips of them working on it a couple of years back but there were no significant improvements. I hope it doesnt become an issue for Maaya.
Thanks potos. I seem to recall that we had concluded that 'Eala' is an alternative spelling for Ayala. But I need to dig that up again.
Maaya has a good first serve (powerful, but low percentage), but a very poor second serve -- and the difference between the two is too stark. Her coach points out that the second serve may be weak but is reliable, which the first isn't.
I haven't seen Alexandra's matches this week, but you can't have such a terrific run (beating Ostapenko, M Keys, I Swiatek) without having a very good game indeed. At 19, she is surely a rising star.
It is interesting, though, that Alexandra's last tournament was the W125 Mumbai Open -- where she lost in the last-16. Terrific leap from that level to the semifinal of Miami (and a very narrow loss to Pegula there).
