Sahaja Yamalapalli thread

[sameerph]

There is something with wrong with that UTR of Sahaja for sure. Even if her Bangalore results are not updated, she should be ahead of Shrivalli and certainly Vaidehi based on her current form. Maybe her ranking is not updated properly, that is why it shows 11.xx in normal view. Does a player have to register or something on UTR to be rated ?

[Dinesh]

Is there no streaming for W75 Pune?

[jayakris]

^^ Yeah, something is wrong. There has been no live stream, and even the live scoring is not working well. Why did ITF have to go mess up that excellent live score update page they used to have? The people who run tennis just cannot let a good thing persist. Sometimes I think there is a mafia out there, hellbent on killing tennis.

[jayakris]

Since Sahaja has confirmed this elsewhere, such as in an ITD interview this week, I can give an update here about her coaching situation. I knew that she was not working with Harsh Mankad since the time she went to Thailand 6 weeks ago. Since Bangalore, Sahaja has been working with a Barcelona based coach, Pau Martin Sole. She told me that she intends to stay in touch with Harsh, but has no coaching/advising arrangement with him now. The three months with Harsh and the off-season work at Minnesota were quite useful for her, in my opinion. Some improvements in her game, especially at the net, were visible to all of us. Also some more aggression in point construction - which I believe the new coach is also stressing. Physical fitness and rehab after the shoulder issue in September was also handled well at Minnesota by Harsh Mankad.

She is also planning to be in Europe soon, after the W50 in Ahmedabad. Pau Martin Sole will be helpful for the Europe tour too. Sahaja has never played in Europe (except for two events in Georgia two years ago), by the way.

[jayakris]

By the way, interestingly, Pau Martin Sole also has some Minnesota connection. I find that he played college tennis recently (2016-19) at a small school, St. Clouds University, which is just an hour away from Minneapolis. I don't think Harsh has known him though.

[jayakris]

Sahaja just missed being seeded among the 16 with an R1 bye at the W50 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (Hard). I believe she was the 17th player, on ranking. She is making it a habit, finishing as the "next-in" among the seeds. That happened once or twice in India too.

Sahaja gets a qualifier TBD in the R64, and if she wins, runs into the 9th seed Anna Rogers (USA,264) in R32.

Update:

[R32] Sahaja Yamalapalli (IND,312) vs (Q) EllieSchoppe (USA,1144)

[deekshith_ttr]

W50 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (Hard)

Sahaja gets a qualifier TBD in the R64, and if she wins, runs into the 9th seed Anna Rogers (USA,264) in R32.

Update:

[R32] Sahaja Yamalapalli (IND,312) vs (Q) EllieSchoppe (USA,1144)

Sahaja loses first round against 1144 ranked player even after dominating firstset and losses in three sets 6-1, 4-6,5-7

Just bizzare... can't understand it happens so many times that too when you are aiming for a spot in Grandslam qualifiers.

She had enough time between completion of Indian circuit and this tournament, can't have excuse of lack of time to get adjusted..!!!
It's there prime time as a player , should make most of it ...!! Play one good tournament in 3 months not going to help climb that steep rankings ladder..
Sorry for ranting, it's just pure frustration

[sameerph]

That is a bad loss. After a very good start to the year in Thailand, Sahaja's form has suddenly dipped. I wonder if it has anything to do with change of coaches.

[arjun2761]

Loss may not be as bad as it appears. Schoppe’s played only a few tournaments without much success but was ranked between 30-50 in NCAA college rankings at the end of last college year (summer 2024). So, she may well be a top 500 level player based on her college success.

[deekshith_ttr]

Loss may not be as bad as it appears. Schoppe’s played only a few tournaments without much success but was ranked between 30-50 in NCAA college rankings at the end of last college year (summer 2024). So, she may well be a top 500 level player based on her college success.

If one wants to be top 200/100, just got to find a way to win these matches... Just can't keep finding ways to lose matches after dominating first set comprehensively ... With current form our players are playing I doubt we would see any meaningful performance at Billie Jeans Cup next month

[jayakris]

That is a bad loss. After a very good start to the year in Thailand, Sahaja's form has suddenly dipped. I wonder if it has anything to do with change of coaches.

Probably does. In my opinion, maybe she was too hasty to make a switch - which was mostly because she wanted a traveling coach, which was difficult for Harsh to do. But I think she might have been underestimating the disruption in "coaching rhythm" that would cause. In most cases, what gets affected first is not the game itself but rather the calm subconscious confidence that one is working with a plan by a trusted coach. When the crunch comes to close out matches and you need to hit your shots without any doubts, that kind of stuff can creep into one's mind... So in retrospect, maybe this disruption was avoidable, though even I thought it was fair for her to experiment with a traveling coach who could be a hitting partner too - to see if that would make a difference, after she had put in good work with HM for the previous 3-4 months. But it looks like it was a hasty call. But Sahaja does make calls like that, like when she decided the same day after talking to Harsh for the first time that she was going to Minnesota to get under his watch - and she got on a plane the next day! The decision to pick Pau as a traveling coach was also quick, the week before the Bengaluru event, to the extent I know. Maybe this experiment was started too soon, and a traveling coach is not really what she needed for a further edge.

This is all just my thinking. She has not told me anything about all this - though she had mentioned during last year that she could really use a traveling coach who could be a hitting partner. Looks like this was all rather unnecessary, as she had done quite well, traveling to many places without a coach. Maybe continuing with remote advice from somebody like Harsh might have been enough, and perhaps better. But anyway, now she is on a 1-6 losing streak

Yeah, the loss was to a top-500 caliber player, but that is still a bad loss for her. Hope she breaks out of the slump next week.

[Atithee]

^^Jay, can you please elaborate on what Harsh’s coaching credentials and successes are for being so wildly supportive of him as Sahaja’s coach?

[jayakris]

^^^ Nothing, as far as coaching serious top-1000 caliber pro players are concerned. Sahaja would be the first one he would be coaching. He has been mostly doing training of coaches and a lot of fundamental early coaching of young players with his Tenicity program that trains coaches and popularizes tennis to populations that the sport had not yet penetrated. He had done one or two one-week programs in Chandigargh or somewhere with Tenicity within the last couple of years and that is all he had done in India as far as I know. No pro-player coaching, but he had been doing nothing away from tennis all along too, despite his economics degree with a high GPA from a very good Univ of Minnesota. He stayed dedicated to tennis for the last 15 years post his playing days, doing his own thing!

It was Sahaja who found that he was really good as a coach for a pro player too, and said as much as well. There were really no big pro coaching credentials from the past to go with, as far as I know.

Of course his player record with an all-court style, pretty much being the first player from India (along with maybe P.Srinath) who was solid in the modern ground-stroke baseline game, and his reputation from then itself as an intelligent and cerebral player, all helped - along with his once being the US college #1, the last Indian to win a grass challenger abroad, sports family pedigree etc. He had also set up an off-the-beaten-track coaching operation and had enough gravitas to bring in a top-notch trainer (with US Olympics training credentials) with him. As Sahaja's family recently moved to the US, those were all the reasons why she picked him. I don't think there was any other Indian in the US that she could go to, for help when she hit a bit of a slump and plateau by last September.

But it was striking that she picked Harsh quickly after just talking to him over the phone, and with no input from any other player as far as I know. That however didn't surprise those of us who know Harsh, and about how quietly passionate and deeply knowledgeable he is, about tennis. So it was basically Sahaja who brought him out as a pro coach, as he had never moved to India to try and build a coaching career there, away from his Minnesota base (wife Anjali is an Indian-American MBA in a good company, whom we all know as a tennis fan who used to post here a lot 20 years ago, and they have two kids). With his several years of tennis tour experience, and his being the senior-most Indian player with extensive tennis tour experience post LP and MB, he was somebody who could have become a top pro coach if he was willing to do coaching at somebody's pro academy as his career, though he never did that in USA or India. So again, I think Sahaja realized all this when she went and worked with him for just a week, and picked him as her coach.

She really liked the advise he was giving remotely and all the player scouting and daily briefings he was doing. And how he and his Tenicity program did her rehab work after the shoulder injury last November. Once he went to India recently and traveled to a few events, many others like Ankita talked to him and found that he was really good with his tennis knowledge and they showed interest in working with him. They could all probably see some improvements in Sahaja too. So we will probably see him coaching some of them off-and-on later. He also has an offer to take over an academy in India which he is mulling over. We will see. Sahaja may have introduced a really good coach to India, who finally decided that he can be away from his US family (2 middle school kids and all) long enough to be there as a coach.

But to answer your question, Harsh's best credentials as a coach of any pro-player is what Sahaja herself said, and what we could see as changes in her game after he coached her for 3 weeks and she went down to Mexico to play the WTA125 and qualified in with some beautiful aggressive tennis. We could all see (at least a bunch of us mad guys on ITD whatsapp groups and all, watching matches live) that she had quickly become much more comfortable at the net, her serve and movements seemed to have some purpose and strategy behind them, and her returns and retrieval shots looked more solid. Sahaja was right in feeling that he was really very good as a coach. But the issue is that he can't travel much with her, and he will naturally be more expensive, due to income losses from his operation in Minnesota if he travels. That is what I sense. Harsh didn't say that, and Sahaja only said that she doesn't have the budget to have him as a full-time traveling coach. That is the situation.

Hope that answer your question in some detail?

[jayakris]

^^Jay, can you please elaborate on what Harsh’s coaching credentials and successes are for being so wildly supportive of him as Sahaja’s coach?

To answer the second part, no, I was not being wildly supportive of HM as her coach. On Vishnu's prompt to me, I had told her to talk to HM last September, but I was also unsure how that would turn out. I also did not know of HM coaching any top-500 pro player or anything. I was only saying above, whether she should have picked up a traveling coach (not suggested by Harsh) so soon, and disrupted any longer-term plans HM would have advised her on. Earlier, when she went to Mexico, she had a young lady Japanese-American coach travel with her, but that coach was talking to Harsh and was following plans they made as a team. That is not the case with Pau as a traveling coach. Maybe he is good too, so I did not complain here when she picked him while at Bengaluru, where she happened to meet Pau. The recent 1-6 streak made me wonder if that was a good call.

But heck, for all I know, maybe she will do very well next week and dispel all these concerns. Sahaja has always been somebody who moved off-the-beaten-track (interestingly, that is so much like Harsh in his playing days, isn't it?). Maybe she made another great call and this is also only a mini "transition slump". Who knows!

[Atithee]

Thanks, Jay for both your responses to my query.