ITF M25 Mumbai, Kalaburagi- Nov 20 to Dec 3, 2023

[PKBasu]

Doubles

[SF] 1-Ramkumar Ramanathan/Purav Raja (IND/IND) d. Ryotaro Taguchi/Ryuki Matsuda (JPN/JPN) 63 64
[SF] 2-SD Prajwal Dev/Nitin Sinha (IND/IND) l. Harrison Adams/Vladyslav Orlov (USA/UKR) 57 57

[sameerph]

And it is going to be an all Indian final in M25 in Mumbai too.

[SF] (3) Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND,642) d. (2) Louis Wessels (GER,360) 76(3) 63

[SF] Siddharth Vishwakarma (IND,874) d. Harrison Adams (USA,969) 76(5) 64

Next,

[F] (3) Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND,642) vs. Siddharth Vishwakarma (IND,874)

[Omkara]

Maybe we were the lucky charm. By not going

[sameerph]

Yes, looks like. Will not be able to go tomorrow as well. May the better player win.

RamK and Purav won the doubles title.

[sameerph]

And RamK has an easy win in singles final.

[F] (3) Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND,642) d. Siddharth Vishwakarma (IND,874) 60 64

With 25 points from that title, RamK will go up to around 520 in the rankings. Slowly getting back to the level where he can play in challengers.

[Omkara]

2024 will be a very important year for Ramk. At once it looked all is lost, but somehow he pulled himself out of the rut. Now what he does of it, where does he go from here, are questions he needs to answer.

[suresh]

Should RamK focus on doubles in 2024? His ceiling is higher there.

[sameerph]

I think he should and he is still making a last ditch attempt to resurrect his singles career. He will see if he can get upto top 200 level again to start with. In the meantime, he can continue to play doubles at challenger level and if it gets to a point where he gets close to top 80 in doubles and is still stuck outside top 200-250, then he can make that switch. Next year will mostly tell us how far his singles comeback will go .

[PKBasu]

Ramkumar should certainly not give up his singles career, especially now that he has started finding some form. But perhaps he shouldn't play a frenzied number of tournaments. Play more doubles, and singles every 2-3 tournaments -- in order to try and maximise both sets of results. He has the fitness levels for singles, but perhaps not the match smarts to win regularly on tour -- rather than have one spectacular run every 6-9 tournaments.

[sameerph]

This week's first round results at Kalaburagi-

Manish Sureshkumar (IND) d. Vladyslav Orlov (UKR/1) 6-3 2-0 ret.
Bharath Nishok Kumaran (IND/Q) d. Nitin Kumar Sinha (IND) 6-4 6-4
Kabir Hans (IND/wc) d. Ha Minh Duc Vu (VIE/Q) 5-7 6-4 6-2
Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND/5) d. Ajay Malik (IND/Q) 6-0 6-0

Sidharth Rawat (IND/4) d. Taisei Ichikawa (JPN) 6-3 6-4
Aryan Shah (IND/Q) d. Adil Kalyanpur (IND/wc) 6-4 6-3
Ryotaro Taguchi (JPN) d. Yunseok Jang (KOR) 6-3 5-7 6-3
Karan Singh (IND/8) d. Ranjeet Virali-Murugesan (IND) 6-4 6-2

David Pichler (AUT/7) d. Arjun Mahadevan (IND/Q) 6-0 6-3
Harrison Adams (USA) d. Dev Javia (IND) 7-5 6-1
Seita Watanabe (JPN) d. Dhruv Hirpara (IND/Q) 6-2 2-0 ret.
Rishi Reddy (IND/Q) d. Parth Aggarwal (IND/L.L) 6-4 7-5

Rishab Agarwal (IND/6) d. Jagmeet Singh (IND/wc) 6-4 3-6 6-4
Manish Ganesh (IND/wc) d. Yuichiro Inui (JPN) 6-1 6-2
Raghav Jaisinghani (IND) d. Shivank Bhatnagar (IND/Q) 6-4 6-3
Ryuki Matsuda (JPN/2) d. Siddhant Banthia (IND) 6-2 6-1

Big upset win by Manish against top seed. 11 Indians in last 16. 4 all Indian match-ups means 4 Indians guaranteed in QF. Hopefully at least 1 more will make it to QF.

[PKBasu]

R2 (last-16) singles results from Kalaburgi:

Manish Sureshkumar d. Bharath Kumaran 61 60
5-Ramkumar Ramanathan d. Kabir Hans 75 36 62
4-Sidharth Rawat l. Aryan Shah 64 67(4) 67(3)
Ryotaro Taguchi (JPN) d. 8-Karan Singh 75 61
David Pichler d. Harrison Adams 76(6) 63
Seita Watanabe (JPN) d. Rishi Reddy 62 63
6-Rishi Agarwal d. Manish Ganesh 61 76(1)
2-Ryuki Matsuda d. Raghav Jaisinghani 62 60

No more upsets of foreign players today. But one all-India QF, so one Indian in the SF is assured.

[sameerph]

3 Japanese are also there in the QF. A bit disappointing fare by Karan Singh in these 2 weeks. Lost to a much lower ranked Japanese today.

RamK lost a set, so he may be beginning to get tired, something which sets in for most Indian players after 7-8 consecutive wins. Lets see if RamK can make it all the way thru this week as well. Really good win by 18 year old Aryan Shah against Sid Rawat. He will play the Japanese guy who beat Karan today. If Aryan can win that, it will confirm 1 Indian finalist.

[arjun2761]

Good to see Aryan Shah play well. We desperately need another potential top-300 quality mens players besides Sumit. Of course, Ramk can get there if he finds form but finding a young rising player take a step in that direction would be great for Indian tennis.

[PKBasu]

Yes, very good signs from 18 year old Aryan Shah. He has qualified in both weeks. Last week he lost to Donskoy in R2, after a good win over Matsuda in R1. This week he has upset Sid Rawat in R2, and will hopefully beat another Japanese player to make the SF. Nice transition to the pro ranks in the nick of time.

[sameerph]

Aryan Shah lost to the 26 36 in the QF though and Rishab Agarwal lost 06 46 against second seeded Japanese.

So, only Indian left in the SF is 5th seed RamK who beat Manish Sureshkumar 75 60. RamK meets Ryotaro Taguchi (JPN,1162). Taguchi beat couple of promising Indians Karan Singh and Aryan Shah in last 2 rounds in straight sets. Hope RamK is able to overcome him.