Rohan Bopanna thread...

[Defender]

Looks like RB had an easy time of it, first round, in beating Serbian qualifier Vukasin Janikovic 6-3, 6-2 at Kalamata futures, Greece.

[nkoth]

He plays Nikos Rovas (GRE, 433) in the second round... Good luck!

-neil

[prasen9]

Steve Gocha's site shows RB's ranking points unchanged from last week.
The Greece semis did not improve his points? His worst is a Futures
semis in the top 14/18? Somehow this does not add up.... Or is it
that the points go in next week? Anyone knows? Jay would you post
RB's points in tourneys in the last year if you have them....

Regards,
Prasenjit

[jayakris]

Yes, the futures points only go in after a week. It's a relic from the past and it's about time ITF and ATP changed this procedure of waiting a week. Previously, they had to wait for the scores to go to ITF as a fax. Then for someone to forward the fax to ATP etc. So they could not be sure of bringing out the monday morning rank list with sunday scores if they had to include ITF futures's points. Only the ATP events (challengers and up) would go into the ranks right away. Now everybody is using emails and the draw spreadsheets only take one minute more to get to ATP... Time they changed it for futures/satellites as well.

Anyway, 6 more points for last week will go into RB's list next week for last week's semi.

Jay

[Defender]

RB beats Nikos Rivos of Greece 6-2, 6-1 in second round.

[nkoth]

Next up a tough quarterfinal match against the #1 seed, 181st ranked Bjorn Rehnquist of Sweden.

Go Ro!

-neil

[BSharma]

Bopanna will have to start winning matches against players ranked 150-200 and his next match will be a test to see if he is making that kind of progress.

Go Bopanna and beat Bjorn Rehnquist of Sweden. And while you are at it go ahead and win the tournament. Jay is eager to make your very own page on his tennis site!

[jayakris]

Still no idea what happened thursday. I saw the friday newspaper from Kalamata. It is in greek and all I can see is the QF matches listed again. Looks like there was rain or something and things got postponed to friday?

Jay

[Defender]

RB lost to Bjorn Rehnquist 6-7(5), 0-6. As Mr. Jaykrisnan asked, what is Rehnquist doing player Futures with his ranking. An opportunity to raise his game eludes RB.

[Defender]

That should have read -- What is Rehnquist doing playing Futures with his ranking? Shouldn't he be playing challengers? All the same, judging by the scores, RB seems to have held his own in the first set, but his game fell apart in the second.

[Dhruv]

Well today while channel surfing, I came across Sahara Samay (www.saharasamay.com) a new TV news channel started by the Sahara people doing a live on air interview (in the newsroom) with Rohan Bopanna. Now this was at about 19:50 so I guess it was after his match, but as I only caught the end of the interview I did not get any scores . However, I must say he did a reasonable job in the interview and was mentioning that he thought that a few Indian players himself included could be in the top 100-200 ranked players or so by next year as more sponsorship was being found. He was also asked what the future was like and he said with increased sponsors that were required it would be quite easy to get multiple top 100 players from India as the juniors were quite competitive. I am paraphrasing but basically that's what was mentioned. I will now keep watching watching SaharaSamay and hopefully they carry/show the interview again I will get more highlights.

On a secondary note I am impressed with Sahara Samay as a news channel per se as it is the only channel that actually carries scores from ITF and challenger tourneys being held in India on a semi-regular basis atleast on the news ticker on TV. It is a new channel started about a month back as Sahara tries to make its foray into the multimedia world. Hopefully these Sahara guys get involved with 5% of the money they give to cricket and that will be a quantum jump for Indian tennis.

I will add to the interview if I see it again

[PKBasu]

This is a well-thought-out schedule, and Rohan should make steady progress with this. Hopefully, he and Harsh will hook up at some point, and tour together for a while -- perhaps during the grass season. That way, they will be each other's travelling/practice partner -- and increase their chances of getting noticed by other players (and so obtaining more practice partners). The example of the Swedes, Dutch, etc. should be salutary. It really is a mystery why the two top Indians don't tour together much more. And with Prakash and Stephen, they could even form an awesome foursome during the grass season.

[jayakris]

Harsh and Rohan won't be together till the US challengers, it seems. Harsh will be in Portugal for 4 weeks, as he needs another 20-30 more points to move into the challenger circuit regularly. I expect this could be his HM's last satellite circuit. He will put in his name for Wimbledon qualies, but the list is made three weeks ahead of qualies 9unlike the sign-in at the ATP events) and any new ranking right outside top-300 that we expect after Portugal will come out only the week before Wimbledon qualies. So unless Wimbledon qualies drops to around 375, HM cannot make it in .

The bottom line is, if he is not at Wimbledon qualies, HM will skip the grass season and go from clay straight to hard courts in 5 weeks or so. I think both HM and RB might be in the US after a couple of months for the challengers before US Open (Aptos, Lexington?). Basically the slight ranking difference causes different plans for them till then.

But then again I am not sure if these two are ever going to travel together. Before they even think of hooking up, I think there will be Indians who will try to prevent them from planning together by putting wedges between them and playing the "you are better than him" stuff. Not that that has happened, but I won't be the least bit surprised if that happens. That is our Indian way

Jay