India Challengers February 2024

[sameerph]

At what ranking can you get into ATP tournaments? Or even ATP quals? In doubles.

Unfortunately they have removed qualifying from ATP tournaments in doubles except for ATP 500 tournaments. For ATP 250 main draw, usually you need a combined ranking of around 170 or so, differs from week to week but VSP and Aniruddha are able to get into ATP tournaments for 3-4 weeks in current series with a combined ranking of around 170.

[sameerph]

In this week's Pune Challenger, only 3 Indians played in qualifying as wild cards- Sid Banthia, Aditya Balsekar and 16 year Arnav Paparkar. All of them lost in straight sets- Arnav's 36 46 scoreline against a 344th ranked player is encouraging one.

This time all 3 wild cards have gone to Indians, So, we have 4 Indians in the singles main draw-

[R1] (1) Sumit Nagal (IND,101) vs. Yu Hsiou Hsu (TPE,227)

[R1] (WC) Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND,420) vs. Stefano Napolitano (ITA,160)

[R1] (WC) Sasikumar Mukund (IND,457) vs. (8) Federico Gaio (ITA,202)

[R1] (WC) Niki Kaliyanda Poonacha (IND,791) vs. Goncalo Oliveira (POR,213)

RamK gets last week's champion in first round, Mukund gets the 8th seed.

In doubles, Jeevan and Arjun are back as top seeds and they play Niki-Rithvik in first round. Last 2 week's champions, RamK-Saketh play the second seeds in first round, Balaji along with Begemann are 4th seeds.

Niki and Mukund play their first round matches today.

[PKBasu]

Let's have a few upsets by home-country players ousting foreign seeds!!

[prasen9]

Let Ramk show he is not a 420. He is much better!

[gautam]

A good solid play by Niki. He takes out Oliveria is 3 sets. Niki's game seem to be quite solid (more than even Mukund's), not sure why he isn't ranked higher.

[Sanjay]

Why no Manas Dhamne in Pune?

[PKBasu]

Two terrific upset victories in R1 of the main draw by Indian wildcards today:

[R1] WC-Sasikumar Mukund (IND,457) d. (8) Federico Gaio (ITA,202) 63 62
[R1] WC-Niki Kaliyanda Poonacha (IND,791) d. Goncalo Oliveira (POR,213) 63 67(2) 76(3)

[PKBasu]

Next up for Niki is the top seed, Sumit, assuming the latter wins his R1 against a Taiwanese opponent.

Mukund's opponent will be either 19-year-old Coleman Wong (HKG,237) or 21 year old Q-Felix Gill (GBR, 344).

[sameerph]

Yes, excellent start for us by Niki and Mukund who get one of their best wins back to back.

Hope Sumit will follow tomorrow, RamK has the toughest match against last week champion, so not expecting anything from, it will be a bonus if he does something.

[vparam]

Sumit fortunate to win the 1st set in a tiebreak. Does he ever drop shot his opponent? Don’t believe I ever seen him hit one. He has so many opportunities when his opponent is pinned 10 feet behind the baseline and Sumit has a short ball and tries to hit a winner. Mix it up a bit Sumit to keep your opponent honest. Just my 2 cents of coaching there.

[kishash]

Sumit wins 7-6, 6-4 . Was a break down in the second set and had point to be two breaks down but managed well thereafter. Now 95 in live ranking.

I agree he is rarely seen using the drop shots. Must improve there and he could get some easy points.

[Sanjay]

Ramki wins 76 76!
Winner last week, first round loser this week. How tennis puts one it their place.

Looks like Ramki is making a comeback.

[sameerph]

Excellent win by RamK over last week's champion. Really did not expect this against the Italian who was playing so well last week.

So, all 4 Indians in singles second round.

[R2] (1) Sumit Nagal (IND,101) vs.(WC) Niki Kaliyanda Poonacha (IND,791)

[R2] (WC) Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND,420) vs. (Q) Alexey Zakharov (RUS,610)

[R2] (WC) Sasikumar Mukund (IND,457) vs. (Q) Felix Gill (GBR,344)

[PKBasu]

[R1] 1-Sumit Nagal (IND,101) d. Yu Hsiou Hsu (TWN,227) 76 64
[R1] WC-Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND,420) d. Stefano Napolitano (ITA,160) 76(5) 76(5)

Sumit moves decisively into the top-100 now. He is at a new career high of 95 in the live ATP rankings.
Ramkumar moves up to 406.
Niki is 729, and there are several Indians ranked between Mukund (441) and him (Rishab, Sid V, Sid R, Karan Singh, etc.). Nishesh Basavareddy (USA, 438) is just above Mukund.

[PKBasu]

For a change, doubles results continue to be disappointing. 2 of the 3 Indian pairs lost today. The only win:
[R1] Siddhant Banthia/Parikshit Somani (IND/IND) d. Goncalo Oliveira (POR)/Luca Margaroli (SUI) 57 76(5) 10-5
But:
[R1] 4-N.Sriram Balaji (IND)/Andre Begemann (GER) l. Kaito Uesugi/Toshihide Matsui (JPN/JPN) 64 67(5) 5-10
[R1] Sai Karteek Reddy Ganta/Karan Singh (IND/IND) l. Adam Walton/Tristan Schoolkate (AUS/AUS) 63 36 4-10