ITF M25/M15 New Delhi, Chandigarh - Mar 2024

[sameerph]

Easy win for RamK in finals.

[F] (3) Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND,409) d. Karan Singh (IND,730) 62 62

So, RamK's winning streak in these India M25 tournaments continues with this 4th title in last 6 months and with this he will move upto around 360 in ATP rankings in 2 weeks time.

Getting close to getting into main draws of some challengers. At least he will be a high seed in the qualies.

[PKBasu]

Ramkumar now at 351 in the live singles rankings.

I was at the DLTA courts for the final, and he absolutely demolished Karan Singh, although the latter made it a lot easier by missing 90% of the shots at the net (I know that is probably not the stat, but that's what it looked like!). Overheads, volleys, anything -- particularly the easiest shots -- Karan missed by a country mile. He has good groundstrokes and a reasonably strong serve. But Karan needs to improve his net game. Ramkumar is clearly too good for the Futures level, absolutely decimating a guy who beat Evgeny Donskoy (former world #65 and near-invincible in these tournaments a year ago in Delhi and elsewhere in India).

[PKBasu]

For Chandigarh, last week's Delhi doubles champion pair (Vishnu Vardhan/Sid Banthia) has broken up. Vishnu is seeded second, partnering Manish Sureshkumar (who was part of the runner-up pair last week), and SidB is partnering Karan Singh.

In singles, Ramkumar took one of the wildcards, and is seeded 2nd in Chandigarh. No Donskoy this week (as it's an M15). 1-Sultunov plays Manish (his conqueror in Delhi) again this week. Karan Singh is seeded 8th and played Mitsuki Leong of Malaysia. Mukund is seeded 3rd and plays a wildcard, Kabir Hans, in R1.

[jayakris]

I was at the DLTA courts for the final, and he absolutely demolished Karan Singh, although the latter made it a lot easier by missing 90% of the shots at the net (I know that is probably not the stat, but that's what it looked like!). Overheads, volleys, anything -- particularly the easiest shots -- Karan missed by a country mile. He has good groundstrokes and a reasonably strong serve. But Karan needs to improve his net game.

It is basically the case with a lot of our young players these days, in my opinion. Pretty good ground strokes but very poor at the net. This stuff can be coached and if they want to take the next step, this also will be needed; not just better accuracy and power in ground strokes.

But you said he missed "particularly the easiest shots".. That is what I had noticed too, in the 2 or 3 matches I watched Karan play, on ITF live stream. He occasionally handles and hits some tough shots at the net, showing he probably can get better at this... But he would totally mess up the easy ones out of either a lack of confidence or from trying to be over-aggressive (when he has a split second to think).

[jayakris]

For Chandigarh...
In singles, Ramkumar took one of the wildcards, and is seeded 2nd in Chandigarh. No Donskoy this week (as it's an M15). 1-Sultunov plays Manish (his conqueror in Delhi) again this week. Karan Singh is seeded 8th and played Mitsuki Leong of Malaysia. Mukund is seeded 3rd and plays a wildcard, Kabir Hans, in R1.

Yuvan Nandal (who has a junior exempt entry) against Adil Kalyanpur is my pick of the first round match I am interested in.

Aditya balsekar upset the qualies 2nd seed Ivan Denisov and made the final Q against Shivang Bhatnagar. The other top seeds are all mostly thru. #1 Madhvin Kamath, #3 Raghav Jaisinghani, #4 Chirag Duhan, #5 Vishnu Vardhan, #6 Dev Javia, #7 VM Ranjeet. Except #1 and #4, they all play Indians, and we are assured of at least 6 Indian qualifiers to join the main draw. So we will have at least 20 Indians in the main draw; maybe up to 22.

[jayakris]

By the way, I notice that the Chandigarh M15 has a title sponsor "Indian Tree". Apparently they are an apparel company. I have never heard of them, but they were the official apparel company for the MSLTA Pune Open too. They seem to be big time into tennis. Have any of you seen clothing from "Indian Tree"?? (Since they support tennis, I decided I will probably buy something from them next time I am in India, if I can find it!)

Anyway, I went looking to find out where this company came from... Almost no info online, except from an Australian clothes outlet with the same name that looks unrelated. I found an instagram page, https://www.instagram.com/indiantreeofficial/ and all they have at that page are tennis player pictures (everybody from RamK to Yuki to Saki to Rishi Reddy!)... This looked really mysterious.

Then I went looking for company info, and finally found that they are only about 3 years old, and are based in Dehradun. Finally looked up the registration, and found that the company is registered under... Varun Walia! Mystery solved.

Varun Walia was an Indian player during 2003-2011 period. He actually traveled a lot around the world, just pursuing his tennis dream, but with very limited success. He did get to around ATP #1200. I am glad to see the 38 year old doing something in business, and (I assume) being successful enough to also support Indian tennis. Kudos!!

But put up some merchandise info also online, dude! ... Not just tennis pictures ... Or is it a clever strategy like Elon Musk had, to spend money, talk about a product for a long time, build demand and then launch the product?

[Dinesh]

^^^ They only take orders via WhatsApp. I actually like their colors, and wanted to order some when I went home last year but they didn’t respond to my questions (re:seam length for shorts, etc.,). Saketh, Manish, SDPD and a few others actually wear their clothes. I also remember Sriram Balaji wearing them before he entered the ATP tour events.

[arjun2761]

Good to see Karan have the raw skills to make an impact at the top 500 level. Hope he can work on polishing his skills to do well on the tour. Ramk has the ability to do well at the challenger level, so hopefully this series of futures will get him going at the challenger level.

[Rajiv]

So Ramu jumps to 351 and a title here @15 should take him around 330.

[jayakris]

Meanwhile, a really nice win for Junior Exempt entry Yuvan Nandal... He beat Adil Kalyanpur 75 63 to earn his first ATP point in the R1... 7th seed Sid R also advanced beating a Japanese player.

The qualies finished with all eight spots taken by Indians. The big surprise was qualifying wildcard 16 year old Hitesh Chauhan who qualified in, beating 3 guys in straight sets, including the 16th seed Suraj Prabodh and 7th seed VM Ranjeet. Wow! The guy also served 7 aces against Ranjeet today in a 62 63 win. Hitesh is ranked #285 in the juniors, and this is his very first pro event!! Here are the qualifying draw/results

So we have 22 Indians in the main draw, and 14 of them are drawn against each other. Six all-indian matches and six matches against foreigners tomorrow (only one of those matches has a higher ranked Indian). There will be at least 8 Indians in the second round, but hopefully 10 to 12 will advance. The Main Draw/Results...

Manish S has a tough match against the top seed Sultanov tomorrow.

[SaniaFan]

^^^ They only take orders via WhatsApp. I actually like their colors, and wanted to order some when I went home last year but they didn’t respond to my questions (re:seam length for shorts, etc.,). Saketh, Manish, SDPD and a few others actually wear their clothes. I also remember Sriram Balaji wearing them before he entered the ATP tour events.

Is this not their website indiantreeexclusive(dot)com. They are Australia based. or may be two different brands.

PS: Deliberately did not post the clickable url and we can remove this later

[jayakris]

^^^ But that is an entirely different IndianTree, as I mentioned above. I see no indication that they are connected to the Dehradun apparel company that Varun Walia registered.

[ornatebrute]

Indian Tree had previously malso partnered with ITD for tees and hoodies, @Jay.

[jayakris]

Indian Tree had previously malso partnered with ITD for tees and hoodies, @Jay.

Yeah, it seems like they are sticking to tennis and spreading the word only in tennis circles. No advertisements, websites, news or anything to sell merchandise. A bit weird. Not sure how "whatsapp only" marketing works!

[PKBasu]

M15 Chandigarh

[R1] Manish Sureshkumar (IND,877) l. Khumoyun Sultanov (UZB,331) 26 36
[R1] Q-Hitesh Chauhan (IND, UNR) d. WC-Shanker Heisnam (IND, UNR) 62 36 75
[R1] JR-Yuvan Nandal (IND,NR) d. Adil Kalyanpur (IND,1474) 75 62
[R1] 6-Siddharth Vishwakarma (IND, 659) d. Shivank Bhatnagar (IND, 1687) 62 60
[R1] 3-Sasikumar Mukund (IND,427) d. WC-Kabir Hans (IND,1654) 76(2) 36 62
[R1] Madhwin Kamath (IND, 1192) d. Jang Yunseok (KOR, 876) 52 wo
[R1] Bang Shuo Yin (TPE,833) d. Kazuma Kawachi (JPN,1106) 62 62
[R1] Q-Dhruv Hirpara (IND,1265) d. 5-SD Prajwal Dev (IND,600) 75 wo
[R1] 7-Sidharth Rawat (IND,714) d. Yuichiro Inui (JPN,1180) 76(5) 46 61
[R1] Q-Rohan Mehra (IND,1618) l. Thanapet Chanta (IND,915) 26 46
[R1] Nitin Kumar Sinha (IND, 1022) d. Siddhant Banthia (IND, 1038) 64 63
[R1] Q-Raghav Jaisinghani (IND,1215) l. 4-Nam Hoang Ly (VIE,488) 06 26
[R1] 8-Karan Singh (IND,732) l. Mitsuki Wei Kang Leong (MAS,794) 67(7) 26
[R1] Chirag Duhan (IND, 1297) d. Wishaya Trongcharoenchaikul (THA, 792) 75 36 63
[R1] WC-Ajay Kundu (IND,NR) l. Woobin Shin (KOR,1043), 36 16
[R1] 2-Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND, 351) d. Manish Ganesh (IND, 1645) 63 62

[Added the remaining results to what PKB had posted, and rearranged in draw order - Mod, Jay]