India Challengers February 2024

[vparam]

The 3 week India stretch has been nothing short of a disaster for Balaji.

[jattukarthik]

True. Balaji has been sub par in this indian leg . A deep run into 3 challenger would have taken him close to ~ 70's. He missed an golden opportunity. He should have chosen a better partner for the indian conditions. Begemman was good in indoors but he has hardly performed well in this year in outdoors. Balaji's ranking has again dropped to 89 . He should have better utilized these conditions

[PKBasu]

[R2] WC-Sasikumar Mukund (IND,457) d. Q-Felix Gill (GBR,344) 61 60

Mukund holds at love to take the first set 6-1
Mukund breaks at the start of the second set, after a couple of deuces. Then holds easily. 2-0
Breaks again! 3-0
And he cruises to 6-0 in the second set!!

He rises to 421 in the live rankings. Another victory will catapult him back into the top-400.

Mukund plays either Adam Walton (AUS, 153; winner of the Burnie Challenger two weeks ago) or Wu Tung-lin (TWN, 235) in the QF.

[sameerph]

Wow, what a dominating win by Mukund. He also dominated the first round against a player ranked close to top 200. He seems to have struck his best form.

[PKBasu]

Three Indian pairs in the QF of doubles (while four Indians have made R2 in singles, one of whom is already in the QF, and at a minimum another Indian definitely will be in the QF since two play each other).

[R1] 1-Arjun Kadhe/Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan (IND/IND) d. Rithwik Bollipalli/Niki Kaliyandi Poonacha (IND/IND) 63 63
[R1] 2-Piotr Matuszewski (POL)/Matthew Romios (AUS) l. Ramkumar Ramanathan/Saketh Myneni (IND/IND) 67(5) 46

[arjun2761]

These are some amazing results in singles by our men! Hope it continues here and then back on the tour...

[Sin Hombre]

Similar to what we saw with the women, our best results in singles come at the end of these long home series. We need more of those and they need to be 3-4 weeks long.

[prasen9]

Yes, our bacteria take 7-10 days in people's stomachs and intestine to do a bit of dirty danching

[Sanjay]

What the hell???

[Prakharulz]

Niki is playing top-100 tennis from the two matches I have seen so far. Great serve and powerful forehand.
Has he been injury-ridden through his career? Because his game is certainly far better than his present ranking.

Edit: Also, might be worth adding that the faster court completely played to Niki's advantage. With the limitation in serve, Sumit should focus on clay post the IW/Miami swing.

[Sanjay]

I am happy another Indian won but disappointed that Sumit lost. Niki was playing amazing and his serves were great. Surprised to see that he is older than Sumit.

[Omkara]

I am happy another Indian won but disappointed that Sumit lost. Niki was playing amazing and his serves were great. Surprised to see that he is older than Sumit.

He jumped 100 spots

[arjun2761]

Good win for Niki! Hope he has a late career surge like Prajnesh did! Meanwhile, it also gives Sumit time to make it to Dubai!

[Prakharulz]

Good win for Niki! Hope he has a late career surge like Prajnesh did! Meanwhile, it also gives Sumit time to make it to Dubai!

Sumit withdrew from Dubai qualies. Hopefully, he will get a MD wildcard (he is still an alternate).

[arjun2761]

Yes, it will be great if he gets a MD WC. With rest, he is playing well enough that he could spring an upset which would make it very worthwhile (with 50 points and $43K in prize money). If he loses in R-32, he'd get no points but $23K in prize money would also make it worthwhile.