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

[sameerph]

We have quite a big contingent in Kazakhstan M15 for next 2 weeks.

Dev Javia qualfied thru with a couple of good wins, one over higher ranked player in Q2.

So, we had 6 players in main draw- SD Prajwal Dev and Karan Singh being 6th and 8th seeds with Manish Sureshkumar, youngsters Yuvan Nandal and Aryab Shah and qualifier Dev Javia.

And 4 of them won their first round matches- 2 very good upset wins by Yuvan over fellow Indian SDPD and Dev over 7th seeded Japanese Nishiwaki n 3 sets. Karan had to fight thru in 3 close sets to beat a lower ranked player and Aryan Shah beat a higher ranked local player. Manish lost to top ranked Ukranian in 2 tie break sets.

In second round, Karan and Yuvan play qualifers while Aryan plays top seed Ukranian and Dev meets Spanish wild card.

[sameerph]

In Kazakhstan M15, Karan and Dev won their matches and made it to the QF.

Than, in QF Karan upset top seed top seed #403 Vanshelboim 64 63 while Dev lost in 3 sets against second seed.

In the SF though, Karan lost against Russian qualifier in straight sets.

Overall, still a decent week for our players in Kazakhstan on clay.

[jayakris]

In this week's KAZ M15 in Shymkent, the qualifying top seed Chirag Duhan, 8th seed Dev Javia and 12th seed Sai Karteek Ganta won the Q1 and are in final qualifying round on Tuesday.

The main draw has SDPD as the 7th seed, Karan Singh as the 8th seed, Manish Suresh Kumar, and two junior exempt entries - Aryan Shah and Yuvan Nandal.

[arjun2761]

Both our seeds Karan Singh and SDPD win their first round while Manish Sureshkumar loses. The 2 JE's are yet to play.

[jayakris]

Chirag Duhan and Dev Javia qualified in, so they also play R1 tomorrow (Wednesday). Manish Sureshkumar went down today in the R1 and so did Sai Karteek in the Q2.

[jayakris]

First round matches at the Shymkent M15, KAZ (Hard)

[R1] (8) Karan Singh (IND,696) d. Hanyi Liu (CHN,722), 62 75
[R1] (7) S D Prajwal Dev (IND,670) d. (WC) Damir Zhalgasbay (KAZ,NR), 64 63
[R1] (JR) Aryan Shah (IND,1167) d. (4) Sergey Fomin (UZB,697), 75 60
[R1] (Q) Dev Javia (IND,1377) d. Grigoriy Lomakin (KAZ,795), 46 63 64
[R1] Manish Sureshkumar (IND,918) l. Maxim Zhukov (RUS,873), 57 61 46
[R1] (JR) Yuvan Nandal (IND,1865) l. (Q) Maxim Shin (UZB,1365), 26 26
[R1] (Q) Chirag Duhan (IND,1151) l. (5) Vladyslav Orlov (UKR,651), 46 26

[jayakris]

Aryan with a terrific upset of the 4th seed!! Scores updated above. 22 yr old Dev Javia is playing a good match too now (he seems to have got back to good form lately, after some 3 years in the wilderness)

Update: Dev upset Lomakin as well... He was down 15-40 while serving for the match, but won the next 4 points and took the match. With the QF last week, and this, both as qualifers, I am going to consider that Dev Javia is back!

R2 matches:

[R2] (Q) Dev Javia (IND,1377) vs Matic Kriznik (SLO,1191)
[R2] (JR) Aryan Shah (IND,1167) vs (Q) Maxim Shin (UZB,1365)
[R2] (8) Karan Singh (IND,696) vs Federico Campana (ITA,1115)
[R2] (7) S D Prajwal Dev (IND,670) vs Nicola Rispoli (ITA,1572)

Much easier R2 matches for our guys. Hope at least 2 or 3 will be in the QFs.

[jayakris]

[R2] (Q) Dev Javia (IND,1377) d. Matic Kriznik (SLO,1191), 61 62
[R2] (JR) Aryan Shah (IND,1167) l. (Q) Maxim Shin (UZB,1365), 16 61 62
[R2] (8) Karan Singh (IND,696) l. Federico Campana (ITA,1115), 46 57
[R2] (7) S D Prajwal Dev (IND,670) l. Nicola Rispoli (ITA,1572), 16 57
so
[QF] (Q) Dev Javia (IND,1377) vs (5) Vladyslav Orlov (UKR,651)

So, all four matches were technically upsets. The same 22 year old who beat Yuvan earlier beat Aryan too. Karan's loss hurts. He seemed to be making a strong comeback in the second set, and was up a break at 4-1 and 5-2, but then won only 7 of the next 30 points and got broken twice to lose the match. Dev's upset win over Kriznik was what I did not expect, as Kriznik had upset the top seed Venshelboim in the R1 in easy straight sets.

I am getting quite excited with 22 year old Dev's results these days though. Don't forget that he was our #1 junior from 4 years ago when he went to #54 in junior rankings, when the pandemic came in. I remember reading that his parents wanted him to go to the US to study in college but he successfully warded them off, as he was only interested in tennis. I think he went to some college in India for a sports management diploma or something though. After cracking top-1000 as a 20 year old in 2022, he kept falling, and back out of top-2000 by late last year. But he has been playing well lately. From seeing his pictures, I always thought Dev needed to put on some weight and get physically stronger, but I have never seen him play, to say more. In any event, he has been in good form lately and I hope he is ready to move up into the top-600 which he is probably capable of doing right now. Then we will see if he can get even better. He will move up from 1377 to around 1225 next week and around 1150 the week after, with back-to-back QFs as qualifier. He may be able to avoid qualies at many M15 after that.

The other three get one ATP point each, which doesn't hurt at this level, but they lost the chances for more.

[jayakris]

Meanwhile, two Indian pairs are playin in a doubles semifinal there, so Indians will be in the final in doubles.

[SF] S D Prajwal Dev (IND)/ Sai Karteek Reddy Ganta (IND) vs Chirag Duhan (IND)/ Karan Singh (IND)

[jayakris]

Tough loss for Dev at the Shymkent M15 in KAZ.

[QF] (Q) Dev Javia (IND,1377) l. (5) Vladyslav Orlov (UKR,651), 46 61 67(4)

Actually, Dev won more points than Orlov (100 to 96). It was back and forth all match, except for a brief period in the second set when Orlov was under duress. In the third set, Dev was behind by a break, but cauhght up at 4-4. Neither BP after that and it ended in the tiebreaker with Dev saving two match points but then falling.

Like I said, he seems to be playing at a top-600 quality now. At least top-750. Hope he gets there this year...

Top seeds SDPD and Sai Karteek beat Karan and Chirag in the doubles SF and are in the final at Shymkent.

[jayakris]

Karan Singh now goes to Monastir for the next few weeks. Not sure where others are going... Not too many places to play at now.

[sameerph]

I think Dev Javia was injured for more than a year or so. Now he is showing again that he has talent and can mostly go to top 600 level in some time if stays fit. Once he reaches there, we will see if he has it in him to go further.

[jayakris]

^^ He must have been injured. So I was wondering if his physique had improved. He always looked like he could put on another 5 kg and get a little stronger. But there was this below picture from ITD last week, which seems to show that he has become more muscular... Hopefully the legs have got stronger too - as that is the Achilles heal for many Indians.

https://www.instagram.com/indiantennisd ... 6RZrwvqqd/

This is anyway good news that the 22 yr old is playing well again. We really need some talented guy or other below age 27 to come to top-400. Sumit at 26 and Karan at 20 are the only guys in the top-700 in that age category. I don't know what is up with 23 yr old Digvijay and 24 year old Manish who have not done anything in quite a while, and 24 yr old Adil has totally disappeared after hitting top-600 as early as 4 years ago... Then it is only Karan, Chirag, Aryan, Yuvan and Manas - all 20 or under.

[sameerph]

^^^ Digivijay has been injured and has not played since last October. Hope he is getting better and is waiting for his protected ranking to kick in before starting again on pro tour.

Manish has totally lost after a start where he looks like our next top 250-300 level player at least a few year back when he was 18-20. Will be very surprised if he gets back to that level again as he has not been able to do that in last 3-4 years now.

[jayakris]

#783 Vaishnavi Adkar and #585 Zeel Desai are at Monastir.

Last week at the Monastir W15 first round, 19 year old Vaishnavi had won won round with a good 16 62 63 upset of veteran Shiho Akita (JPN,601) who was a top-250 player once, but fell in the R2 against Gyeong Seo Lee (KOR,795), 57 64 46... Gyeongg Seo is the #2 player in ITF's rankings (which means she has been doing very well in the ITF qualies and lower rounds, compared to her WTA ranking). Vaishnavi is coming along very well. She tried the W35 qualies 2 weeks ago at Hammamet, 120 km to the north of Monastir on the Tunisian coast. Played well for 2 rounds but fell in the Q3 there.

Despite being a high seed, Zeel has got upset in the first round at the Monastir W15s the last two weeks. Zeel has not been playing well for quite some time.