Indians in US College Tennis

[jayakris]

DK Suresh's Wake Forest U is doing well in the NCAA tournaments. Ranked #6, they just reached the NCAA championships final 8, after beating the
"team of Indian-Americans", #19 Stanford, 4-1... Notable was our man Suresh Ekambaram (ranked #79) beating the talented Ind-Am Samir Banerjee (#55) in three sets in a comeback 26 61 64. Super-talented freshman Ind-Am Nishesh Basavareddy (#17) was the only Stanford Cardinal to get a singles win today. The tie started with Suresh and Holden Coons (they ranked as the #2 doubles pair in college) taking care of winning the #1 spot doubles set (after the two teams were tied 1-1). After securing the doubles point, it was off to 6 sinles matches. With Samir and Neel Rajesh losing, Stanford was out after 4 of the singles matches got done with a 3-1 WF lead in singles and thus a 4-1 overall win including the doubles point.

DK Suresh has been playing very well lately, and has a bunch of top-100 wins. He is clearly under-ranked at #79, mostly due to some losses earlier in the season.

[ericcw]

Not an Indian, but an Indian-American freshman has been doing quite well at the University of Texas, who reached the final of the NCAA national championships (to be held today against Pepperdine University). Malaika Rapolu from Cedar Park Texas. In fact she clinched the win in the semifinals, playing at the #6 spot for Texas, yesterday against North Carolina State Univ.

An aggressive player 6 ft 9 inch tall and well-built. Was among the top recruits in college recruiting last year too. She had come to India to play in the ITF juniors a couple of years ago. Dad is Madhuker Rapolu, who is a self-taught coach for her in younger days, from what I understand.

Was searching if this forum discussed Malaika Rapolu before. She won the W15 singles and doubles title last week. Looks like a promising top 300 potential talent

[Atithee]

She’s 5’ 9” not 6’ 9” as Jay wrote in his quoted text. I was surprised that an Indian-American woman was that tall. Still, she’s definitely tall by Indian standards for women. Hope we hear more about her in the coming years. I think tennis is one sport in the US that Indian first generation is making their presence felt. I wonder why golf isn’t, although I know on men’s side there are few phenoms out there.

[Atithee]

Was searching for other stuff but came across Abhishek Thorat’s name. Not sure if he’s at a college now, and his name has appeared in our forum before. Looks like he’s doing alright. Maybe he’ll emerge as a bigger name soon. He has a website where you can ask questions. I thought of inviting him to join our forum .

Here is his results summary:

https://www.tennisrecruiting.net/player.asp?id=853500

Is UTR of 12.XX high (@Dinesh)?

[jayakris]

She’s 5’ 9” not 6’ 9” as Jay wrote in his quoted text. I was surprised that an Indian-American woman was that tall.

Yeah, typo on my part... She is not Malaika Manute Bol Rapolu or anything

[arjun2761]

She’s 5’ 9” not 6’ 9” as Jay wrote in his quoted text. I was surprised that an Indian-American woman was that tall. Still, she’s definitely tall by Indian standards for women. Hope we hear more about her in the coming years. I think tennis is one sport in the US that Indian first generation is making their presence felt. I wonder why golf isn’t, although I know on men’s side there are few phenoms out there.

You can’t be serious! Sahith Theegala is almost in the top 10 in the world and Akshay Bhatia will likely get close to that next year. They have earned $8mm and $5mm last year alone which may be more than all our NRI tennis players earnings combined in their careers.

[Atithee]

^^What? Of course, I know about these two and acknowledged that there are a few phenoms out there on men’s side in my post. Did you miss it?

[arjun2761]

^^^^ They have moved beyond phenoms into among the top tier professionals. Think being the equivalent of Taylor Fritz and Ben Shelton in tennis. There are no Indian American tennis players that are remotely as good as them.

If you are looking for juniors, a simple search of the AJGA rankings shows 4 Indian Americans in the top 50 including 1 in the top 10 - Ronin Bannerjee. Given how strong the US junior golf programs is, they are likely in the top 100 world wide which is also comparable to our junior tennis pipeline.

[Atithee]

^^I don’t know why you are stuck in semantics. I was casual in choosing my words but you lost my entire message, which was:

1. Indian Americans are emerging in numbers for US tennis.
2. Not so many women golfers as I thought there might be except that amazing run by Megha Ganne at the US Open in 2021.

[Dinesh]

18yo Rushil Khosla (UTR 12.36) is a freshman at Cornell university and features in their roster for the 2024/25 season. As a junior, he was ranked as high as #122 in the world, with one J4 clay court title to his name.

Rushil (w/ Eric Verdes) is also in the doubles draw at the 2024 NCAA Championships held at Baylor this week but unfortunately runs into the top seeds from USD in the opening round. Good luck to his college tennis career

[PKBasu]

Rushil Khosla was the guy who Manas Dhamne beat in the SF of the under-18 national championship in April 2001, when Manas was 13 and Rushil was 14, I think. Interestingly that Rushil has taken the US college route.

[usaindia]

^^I don’t know why you are stuck in semantics. I was casual in choosing my words but you lost my entire message, which was:

1. Indian Americans are emerging in numbers for US tennis.
2. Not so many women golfers as I thought there might be except that amazing run by Megha Ganne at the US Open in 2021.

Golf is still an expensive game.
I see tennis picked by quite a few middle school parents.

[gbelday]

Was searching for other stuff but came across Abhishek Thorat’s name. Not sure if he’s at a college now, and his name has appeared in our forum before. Looks like he’s doing alright. Maybe he’ll emerge as a bigger name soon. He has a website where you can ask questions. I thought of inviting him to join our forum .

Here is his results summary:

https://www.tennisrecruiting.net/player.asp?id=853500

Is UTR of 12.XX high (@Dinesh)?

Abhishek committed to Columbia (starting fall 2025). He was originally planning to go to Florida but decommitted recently. My son Rohan knows him well and they played doubles a few times in juniors. They had traveled together with a coach to Europe for a few tournaments in 2023z

[ericcw]

Not an Indian, but an Indian-American freshman has been doing quite well at the University of Texas, who reached the final of the NCAA national championships (to be held today against Pepperdine University). Malaika Rapolu from Cedar Park Texas. In fact she clinched the win in the semifinals, playing at the #6 spot for Texas, yesterday against North Carolina State Univ.

An aggressive player 6 ft 9 inch tall and well-built. Was among the top recruits in college recruiting last year too. She had come to India to play in the ITF juniors a couple of years ago. Dad is Madhuker Rapolu, who is a self-taught coach for her in younger days, from what I understand.

This girl won W50 title last week. Seems promising

[ericcw]