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

[jayakris]

Vaishnavi Adkar (18yo, ITF #944) has reached the final qualifying round at W15 Monastir this week, upsetting the top seed (WTA #1132) in QR2. She will face 17yo Julia Peer (ITF #1963) from Italy in the last hurdle for a main draw berth.

Vaishnavi eradicated Julia Peer, 60 62 and qualified in! The R1 opponent TBD.

[Dinesh]

^^^ Good job. She plays #918 ranked German Selina Dal in the main draw. Dal reached the QF last week at the same venue.

[Dinesh]

Adkar lost to Dal 7-5 6-1. And surprisingly, Luikham breaks her losing streak with a 3-set win (7-5 in the decider!) against a #1241 ranked player. #1322, next. Finally!

[jayakris]

Yeah, STOP PRESS. Jennifer won a match! Jennifer won a match!

[jayakris]

Back to the same story today. 6th seed Jennifer Luikbam (IND,766) had two match points in the second set tiebreaker at 7-6 and 10-9 but she lost to qualifier Maelle Leclercq (FRA,1322), 63 67(10) 46. Once she dropped the first match point there, I knew she was going to lose the match - because, sadly, that is what she has been doing for like 6 months now; so it was a foregone conclusion.

[sameerph]

This week too 18 year old Vaishnavi Adkar qualified for main draw at W15 in Tunisia. She beat unranked Australian Tara Glitch 60 61 in Q1, 8th seed Viktoria Veleva (BUL,ITF-236) 62 61 in Q2 and 16th seed Gina Kondos (USA,ITF-868) 62 62 in Q3. Quite dominating wins again by Vaishnavi.

She meets fellow qualifier Jiaqi Wang (CHN, ITF-121) in first round of main draw. Wang reached QF last week and SF week before that. So, this would be a tough match for Vaishnavi.

[Dinesh]

Vaishnavi upset the in-form Chinese girl 6-3 6-2

[jayakris]

Hmmm. Now this is getting serious! Looks like Vaishnavi is legit. It is quite unexpected of her to be playing at this level suddenly.

Bur Jennifer lost yet another R1 match. 67(9) 67(2) to qualifier Delia Gaillard (FRA,1579)

[Dinesh]

^^^ Jennifer’s opponent is ranked 1579 in the ITF charts, not WTA.

Vaishnavi next plays a 17yo 991 ranked WTA player (#32 in juniors) from Turkey, who upset the 8th seed in the earlier round. Seems like another tough match.

[sameerph]

Hmmm. Now this is getting serious! Looks like Vaishnavi is legit. It is quite unexpected of her to be playing at this level suddenly.

Yes, Vaishnavi did not really go to top level or anything in her junior career. But, there was one week when she had a run to SF on European clay where I had these remarks-

his week 17 year old Vaishnavi Adkar reached SF of J2 tournament in Valencia, Spain on clay. She was unseeded and beat 7th seed in second round and a player who earlier upset 3rd seed in the QF before losing to 2nd seed in the semi final. Excellent run on European clay which is rare by an Indian junior.

After that she did play some tournaments in Europe with middleing results. So, I thought that 1 week was a flash in the pan.

But, these couple of weeks she is showing some really good results. Her scoreline this week are quite impressive- 60 61, 62 61, 62 62 and today 63 62. She is losing only 1 game more than the earlier round in next round. Hope she continues that all the way.

[VReddy]

Hmmm. Now this is getting serious! Looks like Vaishnavi is legit. It is quite unexpected of her to be playing at this level suddenly.

Vaishnavi is a big hitter in the Karman and Sahaja mould. Has one of the hardest forehands amongst the Indian players.

Her junior ranking is low because she has only played about 31 events in Juniors spread across 4 years, impacted by the pandemic. Otherwise she would have been a legit top-30 junior with exposure in Europe.

As we had discussed in our forum few years ago, she missed playing the Junior French Open Wild Card event in Paris due to covid infection.

[jayakris]

^^^ Yes, she was affected the pandemic period. Actually the European event that Sameer mentioned above was what had stayed in my mind too, all along. I was waiting for a long time to see if she would do something to show a spark later on, but she hadn't shown much to reinforce the feeling that she might be good. Looks like she is!

[Dinesh]

Vaishnavi is through to her maiden QF. 6-4 4-6 6-3 win in R2. Will she get in the WTA rankings chart with this?

[sameerph]

Another very good win.

At W15 Monastir, Tunisia

[R2] (Q) Vaishnavi Adkar (IND,NR) d. Melisa Ercan (TUR,991) 64 46 63

This girl Ercan beat ITF junior rank 3 Andreeva in final of J300 at the start of the year in Australia which she won. Andreeva has since won couple of W60 titles at senior level and has reached third round at Madrid masters this week.

Next,

[QF] (Q) Vaishnavi Adkar (IND,NR) vs. (2) Lisa Mays (AUS,615)

[jayakris]

Vaishnavi is through to her maiden QF. 6-4 4-6 6-3 win in R2. Will she get in the WTA rankings chart with this?

I think she needs points from one more event. This is only her second event with WTA points. That is unless she wins the event in which case I think she will get into the rankings rightaway with 10+ points or something like that. Anyway, this is the best news from the female side since Sandeepti earlier this year and Sahaja last year.