ITF M25/M15 India- March/April 2023

[PKBasu]

Tough match-ups in the QF. 5-Mukund plays 2-Crawford, Karan plays 3-Donskoy, Sid V plays 1-Ly Nam Hoang.

3 Indian pairs are in the doubles SF -- Manish/Parikshit, Niki/Rithwik, and SDPD/SKarteekReddyGanta. Karan/Ishaque on court at the moment, down a set in their QF.

[knarayen]

Thanks jay. I haven’t watched Karan Singh before, I’ll take a closer look. I hope Zeeshan is not his coach - he can ruin it for him.

[sameerph]

Sid V faces the top seed, Mukund locks horns with the 2nd seed and Karan runs into the 3rd seed. Can one of them pull an upset and make the SF?

Very tough matches for all 3. Top 3 seeds are all good quality challenger level players. ( Donskoy was in fact an ATP level player till couple of years back).

[knarayen]

Watched the Karan Singh match. This was definitely winnable for him. He didn't get to the net even once in set 1 except to flub a sitter volley at set point to give up the set. That got him down and he lost his service game right away - this shows inexperience more than anything else. I guess the "Praj Syndrome" effects all these guys. So many instances where he would pull Donskoy away to the sidelines scrambling to retrieve, and he sits back and waits for the sitter at net - but wait, he's not at the net! He allows the guy back in and hits another risky corner shot and still does not come in! Who is teaching these guys? Or is it an Indian thing? In my day I would be on top of that net and crunching that

Donskoy's second serve is sitting up on the middle of the court. I guess attacking it and coming in to finish off the attempted pass is off the cards? What exactly are these guys afraid of? Donskoy did not demonstrate any effective passing shots throughout the match - he didn't have to because he wasn't even challenged. I am not holding my breath waiting for Zeeshan Ali to correct these deficiencies.

[PKBasu]

One Indian through to the singles SF, the other two lose tough matches in the QF:

[QF] 5-Sasikumar Mukund (IND, 401; CH 229) d. 2-Oliver Crawford (USA, 290; CH 284) 76(3) 62
[QF] Q-Karan Singh (IND, 915) l. 3-Evgeny Donskoy (RUS, 302; CH 65) 57 26
[QF] WC-Siddharth Vishwakarma (IND, 1002) l. 1-Ly Nam Hoang (VIE, 245) 67(4) 36

Good to see Mukund regaining some form after last week's setback. He is the one Indian who might be able to win one of these M25s at home.

[PKBasu]

Thanks for your thoughts, Prof. From what I observed while watching last week's SFs, Donskoy's stroke-making (power and accuracy of ground strokes) was a clear notch or two above the other 3 semifinalists, so I wasn't at all surprised that he won. Karan is a tall lad (who I spoke to briefly), but if he has the game to match Donskoy from the back of the court (and only lacks the ability or willingness to come to the net), that speaks of truly great potential. Unfortunately, today's Indian players rarely learn net skills -- volleys, overheads, drop-volleys, drop shots -- and we are thus giving up some of our legacy strengths. The dearth of grass courts is the main reason. Anyway, I am actually quite encouraged by your comments on Karan.

[sameerph]

Good upset win by Mukund. He runs into Donskoy in the SF who is on a 8 match winning streak here. So, this will be a tough one.

Team of Manish Sureshkumar and Parikshit Somani are into second consecutive final and will play an Australian-Japanese pair in the final who upset top seeds Niki and Rithvik in the SF.

[PKBasu]

Good job by Manish-Parikshit in making their second consecutive M25 doubles final -- beating SDPD-SaiPrateek. In the QF, they had also avenged their loss in last week's final to Alcantara-Isarow (the ASEAN, Phils/Thai, pair that won the title in Delhi). They play Ellis-Sekiguchi (who beat the other Indian pair that had been hot in Futures recently, Niki-Rithwik, in the SF).

[jayakris]

I am not holding my breath waiting for Zeeshan Ali to correct these deficiencies.

Is Zeeshan that bad? At least he was ranked as high as ATP #137, played a lot around the world and got some coaching tips abroad and all that. Most of our other coaches in the country have hardly any experience in anything, so I had always given Zeeshan some respect. But I don't know how good he is, as a coach. I can only hope that we will see you proven wrong in your opinion that he will ruin Karan, but then again, I am not holding my breath on seeing that either

It does seem like Zeeshan and Arun Kumar at AITA's national tennis center at Delhi are Karan's coaches (here is an interview article on Karan from early 2022 -- He strikes me as a thinking guy, quite mature for his age). Karan is under a scholarship from the NTC. I think Digvijay Pratap Singh, Nishant Dabas, Ajay Malik, etc are also at NTC. They were all decent when they got there, but I don't know if anybody has improved. Karan has been slowly improving his results, which is normal and expected at age 19, and Digvijay has had his flashes lately too. But basically, I think they all show some deficiencies when we see them play - some of which look fixable but we don't know if they are getting fixed.

In my opinion, all these guys will have to play a lot, go abroad as much as they can manage to, observe how good players play, do their own analysis of what would work for them, and improve their tennis themselves. I notice Karan say that he thinks a lot about his tennis (even in his sleep, as he says in the interview). In fact, I can almost sense it the way he plays and some of the mutterings he has to himself on court after missing the shots. It is on some deficient items that he seems to react to himself - like he saw something. Anyway, all these guys need to do it themselves. They need to have the "I am my own coach" attitude. Guys like Somdev had that attitude and improved themselves wherever they went.

Unlike many of the others in India at his age, Karan has came up to a decent ranking (now will be in the top-850) at 19 itself to make it into foreign M15s easily. He has planned well too, by going to Monastir, Tunisia, for a long stint of playing qualies week after week to pick up small points (1 point per week for several weeks) and come up the ranks. The above interview actually mentions his plan to go abroad to "a place which has multiple tournament week on week", and he did just that last year and also recently. Now that his ranking is decent, he can plan on trips to any foreign M15s with direct entries.

[jayakris]

Good job by Manish-Parikshit in making their second consecutive M25 doubles final -- beating SDPD-SaiPrateek. In the QF, they had also avenged their loss in last week's final to Alcantara-Isarow (the ASEAN, Phils/Thai, pair that won the title in Delhi). They play Ellis-Sekiguchi (who beat the other Indian pair that had been hot in Futures recently, Niki-Rithwik, in the SF).

Manish and Parikshit are showing some spark as a doubles team. Are they the "next pair" to keep an eye on? They are both young at 23, and it seems Parikshit has pretty much given up on singles now, after a whole year or two of qualifying round losses. Manish definitely hasn't given up singles but must be wondering if he might have reached his ceiling there, after all the injuries in the last year or two. When these two took out Niki and Rithvik last week, it showed that they can't be bad. The consecutive finals make it clear that they need to be taken seriously. But let us see how things pan out.

Here is a nice interview with Parikshit after last week's final, by ITW... He is very honest about his doubles training being "quite unprofessional" ( ) and getting help from Bops' Dubai camp. He also talks about Manish being the only one who would believe in him to play with him in doubles, after his chronic Ankylosing spondylitis (also axial spondyloarthritis) issue stopped his singles career.

[jayakris]

Parikshit is now at a career-high just inside top-350, as the 13th Indian doubles player. In live rankings, 10 of them are in the top-160, and then Niki is at #277, Rithvik is at #284 and Parikshit is at #349 now, Manish is #14 at #446. Interestingly, except Bops, Jeevan, RamK, Purav, Divij, the other 9 guys in the top-450 are all at career-high doubles rankings!

[sameerph]

Unlike many of the others in India at his age, Karan has came up to a decent ranking (now will be in the top-850) at 19 itself to make it into foreign M15s easily.

Yes, Karan is now just outside our top 10 and at 19 he is at least 3 years younger than anyone even in top 15. The youngest one after Karan in top 15 is Digvijay who is 22 and than Manish who is 23.

So, Karan is clearly our best hope right now from among those who are still not under 18 ( like Yuvan, Aryan etc).

Karan is 3 months shy of his 20th birthday. To gauge his potential, we can see where our current players who ended up at least in top 300 where at this age- Yuki had gone to top 300 by that time, Sumit and RamK had made it top 350. Mukund was somewhere in 500+. Manish had gone close to top 500 at this age ( his has been the biggest disappointment in recent times in terms of progress).

But, there were others like Prajnesh and Saketh who were nowhere at that age. They did not play much at all at this age.

So, probably realistic expectation from Karan would be for him to become a top 300-250 challenger level player. Anything more would be a bonus.

[knarayen]

Thanks for your thoughts, Prof. From what I observed while watching last week's SFs, Donskoy's stroke-making (power and accuracy of ground strokes) was a clear notch or two above the other 3 semifinalists, so I wasn't at all surprised that he won. Karan is a tall lad (who I spoke to briefly), but if he has the game to match Donskoy from the back of the court (and only lacks the ability or willingness to come to the net), that speaks of truly great potential. Unfortunately, today's Indian players rarely learn net skills -- volleys, overheads, drop-volleys, drop shots -- and we are thus giving up some of our legacy strengths. The dearth of grass courts is the main reason. Anyway, I am actually quite encouraged by your comments on Karan.

Karan has good net skills, from the little I saw. He just doesn’t use them. I can sit with the guy and do a video analysis with him. PKB if you can facilitate that, and be present, that would be great. We can meet at Bopanna’s “The Sports School” in Bangalore. I’m meeting Harsha Thimmaiah next week- he does business development for them. I’m constrained for travel due to my parents condition.

[jayakris]

To gauge his potential, we can see where our current players who ended up at least in top 300 where at this age- Yuki had gone to top 300 by that time, Sumit and RamK had made it top 350. Mukund was somewhere in 500+. Manish had gone close to top 500 at this age ( his has been the biggest disappointment in recent times in terms of progress).

But, there were others like Prajnesh and Saketh who were nowhere at that age. They did not play much at all at this age.

So, probably realistic expectation from Karan would be for him to become a top 300-250 challenger level player. Anything more would be a bonus.

But there is also the extenuating circumstance that he lost 1.5 years due to Covid, and could not play anybody competitively after Feb 2020 when he was 16, to Sep 2021 when he had turned 18... He only played 2 junior events in India in 2021 January. He had to get match practice against better players only from Sep 2021 onward (but he still became the u18 national champion at the end of 2021). Soon he beat Niki twice (but Niki has been playing better and beat him twice lately too). Last year he beat Manish, and recently beat him once again. He also got multiple wins on decent journeymen like Butulija on the Indian tour (I also remember him upsetting a seed in Tunisia). So, basically, had he not lost the 1.5 years and played a lot more of the top-150 juniors, he might have been more developed by now. The above comparisons should take that into account.

But I agree with your conclusion that we can probably hope for a top-300 type ceiling for now. Anything more will be great. But generally, I think he does not have much limitations that many of our top guys have had, so if he puts in work and gets some good coaching along the way, who knows! I am going to keep some hopes on the guy, for now. Things look positive.

[knarayen]

Thanks for your thoughts, Prof. From what I observed while watching last week's SFs, Donskoy's stroke-making (power and accuracy of ground strokes) was a clear notch or two above the other 3 semifinalists, so I wasn't at all surprised that he won. Karan is a tall lad (who I spoke to briefly), but if he has the game to match Donskoy from the back of the court (and only lacks the ability or willingness to come to the net), that speaks of truly great potential. Unfortunately, today's Indian players rarely learn net skills -- volleys, overheads, drop-volleys, drop shots -- and we are thus giving up some of our legacy strengths. The dearth of grass courts is the main reason. Anyway, I am actually quite encouraged by your comments on Karan.

Spot on. You would think with all the doubles they play these guys can build good net skills? Many top players - Federer, Nadal, etc played doubles early and switched to singles later. Max Purcell is doing it now. Karan has the game “now” to move up several notches. He played one bad game at 5-all in the first set and then went downhill from there. He needs some strong in-your-face counseling to boost his mental strength during these critical games - confidence to go into an defence-to-attack at critical points to show the competition he means business. These skills can be taught - there are some great mental conditioning coaches around. Maybe I need to step up and deliver in this area I don’t know. It is energy- consuming work though - I’ve done it before - tires you out - younger guys should be doing this.