European Challengers 2022

[jayakris]

At the Challenger 80 in Vilnius, Lithuania (hard)

[R1] Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND,274) vs (7) Laurent Lokoli (FRA,204)
and
[R1] (1) Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND)/ Szymon Walkow (POL) vs Dan Added (FRA)/ Theo Arribage (FRA)
[R1] (4) Zdenek Kolar (CZE)/ Divij Sharan (IND) vs (WC) Ricardas Berankis (LTU)/ Edas Butvilas (LTU)

[PKBasu]

Ramkumar is playing good singles for the last few weeks. He needs to control his temperament at key moments, and the wins will start coming. Doubles with a series of different opponents is not working out quite as well.

Sad to see that Divij isn't playing with Purav this week. I hope this is temporary. The Divij-Purav partnership was working very well in recent weeks, and of course took both to the heights of their careers.

[jayakris]

At the Challenger 80 in Vilnius, Lithuania (hard)...

I am watching RamK play and it is the worst I have ever seen him play. On-court decision making (which was never his strong suit to start with) has regressed even further and he is simply not moving with any urgency or spirit. Lokoli has been just teeing on and hitting return winners all along around RamK who mostly stood immobile somewhere after the serve (or was running to some spot aimlessly). Down 16 22

Second set, at 2-2 at 15-30, Ram served an ace (which was good and called as such) but Lokoli thought it was a fault. He should be going to serve his next point... But when Lokoli complained of the call, RamK walks up and has a back-and-forth with him (why are you doing stupid things, RamK?) which prompted the ump to say "Ram, Ram, let me handle this. Just talk to me". Anyway, all it did was to upset his own concentration and he double faulted to face a BP. Sure enough gets broken too. 16 23... Takes some wild swipes at Lokoli's serve with no purpose to even try to break him back, as Lokoli holds, the ball hardly getting into play. 2-4 in the second. RamK held at 3-4, but gave 4 soft returns to Lokoli and stood there for him to pick a spot and hit a 3rd short winner, four times in a row. Lokoli holds; 3-5... Ram held with the first decent net play I saw in several games for one point and a wild return from Lokoli. Serving for the match, Lokoli held at 30, and that is that. 16 46...

After the hand shake, I could hear RamK tell the umpire, "sorry about it" and the ump was like, "I know, don't worry". That there is the problem. RamK is a nice guy who loses it on court every now and then. Many people know that he is a good guy too, but players just get mad at him, and he has built up a reputation for upsetting the opponents on court.

But more importantly, RamK's game has seriously regressed. I don't know if anything physical is bothering him, but he is way too reluctant to use the powerful shots and returns he has (generally the top spin variety). Not sure if there is a wrist issue or something that is causing him to do this, or if it is just the good-old issue of poor decision-making on court. Anyway, it looked really bad all around today. He needs a coach to fix his game and thinking. Maybe he has needed that for a long time. Actually, if RamK simply goes to the ATP site and watches the recordings of his matches, I am sure he will figure out a 100 things he is doing wrong on court. Heck, my untrained eye can catch some 25 of those, so he surely can. please do yourself a favor, and do this, RamK.

Or maybe he is giving up on singles? I hope not!!

[R1] Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND,274) l. (7) Laurent Lokoli (FRA,204), 16 46

[sameerph]

Don't think he is giving up on singles. Else, this week he would have easily made it to doubles main draws of 1 of the 3 ATP tournaments in Europe this week. But, he chose to play this challenger.

Most of the time his return game is so passive, just block and put the ball floating into play, relying on other player to make errors. Good players such Lokoli today do not make such errors. So, the day on which serve is not working ( as was today), he struggles big time. He just does not try to change his game even when he gets beaten in this game week in and week out. Only gets up in 1 odd week and plays very good tennis these days like he did in Tokyo couple of weeks back or in Atlanta ATP couple of months back. It was always like that but these good weeks have reduced considerably this year and the way it is going he may be forced to switch to doubles if he goes down to 300-350 and not able to get into challenger main draws in singles.

[Rajiv]

At the Challenger 80 in Vilnius, Lithuania (hard)...

I am watching RamK play and it is the worst I have ever seen him play.

Have to agree , and more worrying it came less than 5 days after Ismaning where hopes were raised with his elegant and polished display .

Actually had never even had heard of his opponent and upon checking found out that whole of last year and until July this year was plying his wares on the Futures circuit , and yes that unfortunate spat was uncalled for...@Jay it was his opponent who said sorry to the umpire to which the umpire said it ok.. it's ok..its just the perception..

[jayakris]

^^^ Oh it was the opponent who said it. Okay. But I didn't understand why RamK would get into talking to him during the match on line calls. Just don't talk to the other guy, period. Just play. Anyway, it was all a sad show today.

[jayakris]

At the Challenger 80 in Vilnius, Lithuania (hard)

[R1] (1) Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND)/ Szymon Walkow (POL) l. Dan Added (FRA)/ Theo Arribage (FRA), 46 26

RamK just can't seem to win anything these days. In a really bad patch.

[jayakris]

[R1] (4) Zdenek Kolar (CZE)/ Divij Sharan (IND) l. (WC) Ricardas Berankis (LTU)/ Edas Butvilas (LTU), 64 36 [7-10]

So no gains from going to Lithuania, for RamK and Divij.

[jayakris]

At the Challenger 90 in Valencia, Spain (Red Clay)

[R1] (PR) Sumit Nagal (IND) vs Qualifier TBD.

[R1] Anirudh Chandrasekar (IND)/ N Vijay Sundar Prashanth (IND) vs (WC) Javier Barranco Cosano (ESP)/ Eduard Esteve Lobato (ESP)

Those are some long names in that doubles match. I don't know what the N stands for, in VSP's name. Glad that it is only a letter. It may stand for some place name in TN like Narasimhanaickenpalayam, for all I know

[jayakris]

At the Challenger 90 in Valencia, Spain (Red Clay)

[R1] (PR) Sumit Nagal (IND,502) l. (Q) Javier Barranco Cosano (ESP,305), 26 46

I fast forwarded through the match tape. Back and forth breaks at the beginning and then JBC ran away with the set, as Sumit was unable to play even 3 points in a row without making unforced errors, hitting it out or hitting into the net. In the second set, Sumit dropped serve twice to be 0-3, came back with one good stretch of 4 games to lead 4-3, and then dropped serve with errors in the 9th game. That was the match.

Sumit did win a lot of points 45 points to 60 by the opponent (or 44 to 55 when the ball was in play). 4 breaks (out of 6 BPs) too. But JBC was 7 of 8 in that. Getting broken 7 times in 9 games is not the way to play tennis.

Unless there is a hand issue preventing him from generating power (didn't notice too many forehand power shots), nothing physical seemed to be a problem. He is moving well and running fine. The shots had no accuracy though. His game has seriously deteriorated, even from a couple of months ago. Need off-season training/practice to get his game back. Wish he had played the two M25s in India.

Sumit has to play a few M25s. No other way. He never really got back to playing consistently at proper challenger levels in the last 7 months since his return.

[jayakris]

At the Challenger 90 in Valencia, Spain (Red Clay)

[R1] Anirudh Chandrasekar (IND)/ N Vijay Sundar Prashanth (IND) d. (Alt) Raul Brancaccio (ITA)/ Carlos Lopez Montagud (ESP), 46 63 [10-3]

[jayakris]

At the Challenger 90 in Valencia, Spain (Red Clay)

[QF] Anirudh Chandrasekar (IND)/ N Vijay Sundar Prashanth (IND) l. Zvonimir Babic (CRO)/ Piotr Matuszewski (POL), 67(1) 46