Yuki Bhambri

[arjun2761]

Yes, Yuki is at his career high official rank of 37!

In the live ranking, he is at 31 as you note and two of the six people he’s leap frogged include Bops and Ebden who each lost a 1000 points from last years Miami title and have tumbled 20+ positions in the rankings.

[arjun2761]

Miam Masters 1000 (Hard)

[R-32] Y. Bhambri[IND]/N Borges[POR] d R Bopanna[IND]/I Dodig[CRO]. 64 36 10-7

[jattukarthik]

As expected Yuki wins the R1 and becomes officially the india No.1 in doubles . Congratulations . Is this the end of road for bops ? He is lingering at 43 ranking now without any stable partner for this year

[sameerph]

Yes, after more than 5 years, Rohan surrenders his India #1 position in doubles. Now, I think he will find it tough to regain it.

Yuki is now #29 in live rankings but quite a few below him who are still alive. So, probably needs to win at least 1 more match to retain this top 30 ranking in next Monday's official rankings.

Next,

[R2] Yuki Bhambri (IND) / Nuno Borges (POR) vs. Jamie Murray (GBR) / Adam Pavlasek (CZE)

Murray and Pavlasek is also a new pair who paired up at IW and now Miami. They upset 4th seeds Granollers and Zeballos in the first round.

[Omkara]

Rohan did a very sad thing by not selecting Yuki for Olympics. But age and karma are catching up. ( I need help from grammar gurus on the last line).

[prasen9]

It should be "are".

[PKBasu]

Congratulations to Yuki for becoming the India #1, and for breaching the top-30 in the live rankings. He is definitely now the 6th ranked Indian doubles player in the Open era -- after Leander, Mahesh, Rohan, Vijay and Anand. Divij had a career-high of 36.

I hope he can capitalise on the opportunity this week, and make It to the QF or SF. Of course, the title would be even better!

[jayakris]

Rohan did a very sad thing by not selecting Yuki for Olympics. But age and karma are catching up. ( I need help from grammar gurus on the last line).

What karma, though? Rohan hasn't done much of bad karma or anything (at least nothing particularly more notable than the kind of things most tennis players do)... In fact he has done more good karma than most people do with his doubles training camp for Indians and all that. But maybe you mean his karma from now on is to take a further step back and focus on more good karma and improving Indian tennis?

But big congrats go to Yuki for becoming the India #1. For a long time, I used to say that Yuki and any other good Indian was the best doubles pair we had (even in the days when Rohan was already up in the top-100). I had that kind of respect for Yuki's doubles abilities. But over the last couple of years, I started wondering if I was over-estimating him, as he did not really zoom up to top-25 like I had expected. But maybe I was not wrong, after all. It just took a while longer.

[arjun2761]

[R-16] Yuki Bhambri (IND) / Nuno Borges (POR) d. Jamie Murray (GBR) / Adam Pavlasek (CZE) 76(4) 62

Next up,
[QF] Yuki Bhambri (IND)/Nuno Borges (POR) v. (6) J. Cash (GBR)/L. Glasspool(GBR)

Yuki is 2-1 against this pair this year.

Yuki is now 26th in live rankings with 1 person that can overtake him. Winning the QF could get him to 24 and winning the title (why not?) will get him to the teens.

[deekshith_ttr]

^^Yuki physically looking in great shape as well, which is rubbing of in his game, now he has played last 4 tournaments with 4 different partners and still did great and achieved carrier high doubles rankings. Popyrin losing singles early helped to fully focus on doubles in Dubai open , now Nuno Borges losing early in singles also helping to go deep in doubles, all blessing in disguise. With the current rankings he will be able to get into bigger tournaments, onwards and upwards.

[PKBasu]

How I wish Yuki would have achieved this level of fitness for just 6 months during his singles career. Sadly, he kept getting injured and had to rise from 600 to the top-100 twice in his career, and was soon injured just as he was primed to make a run up to a much higher ranking.

Now he's 26 in the live doubles ranking, and looks certain to rise to 24 with his next win. The title will catapult him to 17. Whatever happens, he is now assured of playing Masters regularly, and should be seeded in Slams as long as he picks partners ranked close to him.

[Sanjay]

^^Yuki physically looking in great shape as well, which is rubbing of in his game, now he has played last 4 tournaments with 4 different partners and still did great and achieved carrier high doubles rankings. Popyrin losing singles early helped to fully focus on doubles in Dubai open , now Nuno Borges losing early in singles also helping to go deep in doubles, all blessing in disguise. With the current rankings he will be able to get into bigger tournaments, onwards and upwards.

Why is he changing partners so much though?

[ericcw]

He is choosing quality singles players with decent doubles skills for one tourney at a time. Interesting.

Is this the right approach compared to middling late 30s age Doubles players? Hope he has a method to his madness.

[sameerph]

I don't think it is a matter of choice for Yuki. His partner for almost last 1 year, Albano Olivetti got injured at Australian open. So, Yuki had to search for a new partner and in the middle of the season most of the doubles top 50 players are committed to another partner and usually they would not break that so early in the season. So, Yuki had to pick up whoever is ready to play doubles in that particular week and is not committed with anyone else. So, 2 of the 4 weeks he has partnered with doubles specialists ( Dodig, Goransson) and in other 2 singles specialists ( Popyrin, Borges).

Now it will be interesting to see his strategy going forward. Albano Olivetti seems to be returning to action this week, playing Napoli challenger to start with. Will Yuki return to him now ? I think will not be possible of them to make masters main draw as Olivetti is still ranked only 47. So, I guess Yuki will have to choose a different partner now.

[deekshith_ttr]

^^ For Monte Carlo Yuki is partnering again with Popyrin, they had great chemistry in Dubai open , nice to see them get back together again. But the problem with singles players is if they go deep in singles then doubles becomes second priority but still believe this partnership would work in bigger tournaments where it's spread across two weeks.
On side note, interestingly Bops is partnering with Shelton..!! and both don't actually like Clay courts..