jayakris wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 5:47 pm
Sumit was actually in Canada with Bobby Mahal (with Mahesh"s support) for a good enough period before that too, so he did get some good hands-on coaching. He showed results too when he went inside top-125 and took a set off Federer at the US Open and all that. But now he is in a slump after the surgery and has to climb out of it himself. Some traveling coach could help him (I assume he doesn't have one?).
Yea Jay. That’s correct. Bobby did help Sumit and Karman a lot when they were young. I met Bobby a few times (most recently had dinner with him and Sachin Kirtane during USO) and we still keep in touch. He runs the Advantage Tennis in Toronto area. He’s organizing a J2 in his club in the first week of April again.
He showed me videos of Sumit playing with Shapo and Karman beating up Bianca in practice when he was training them. That’s where the Shapo-Bops connection originated. Bops is still very invested in Sumit’s career but not sure if he helps out financially. I am not sure if Mahesh is still involved.
Atithee - Manas got full support from IMG after he won the Eddie Herr at 12. Jerry won almost all junior USTA tournaments that he played as a junior (clays, hards. Winters etc). I don’t think Yuki spent more than a few weeks at a time at IMG (Bolittieri back then). I am actually curious to know if he was offered a full time scholarship after winning the Aussie Open juniors because IMG tends to do that (i.e., go after winners).
potos wrote: ↑Fri Sep 16, 2022 9:04 pm
I am too young for Ramesh’ era, unfortunately.
As for the Filipino-Americans, they were recruited to mask the failures. It started with Cecil Mamiit and Eric Taino, but they only accepted when they were already past their prime. Treat Huey and fellow doubles specialist Ruben Gonzales were next. But to be fair to both, they did not need a lot of recruiting. Fil-German Katharina Lehnert was also recruited for the women’s side although she retired quite early.
The current crop of good Filipino-foreign tennis players haven’t really shown any desire to represent Philippines. Desirae Krawczyk, Angela Kulikov, and Sabrina Santamaria are all in doubles top 100. Of course, Leylah Fernandez will never even consider. Lol! And then there are the likes of Lizette Cabrera, Jason Kubler and James McCabe in Australia. My hopes are high on US NCAA standout Eryn Cayetano to eventually shift to Philippines though since she is extremely proud to represent her culture. And that should encapsulate how broken Philippine tennis is, that an avid follower like me even have to hope for someone from another country’s tennis system to shift allegiance just for some semblance of competitiveness. Good thing Alex Eala came along, thanks to her family being rich and Rafa Nadal Academy for nurturing the talent.
@potos Watching Desirae Krawczyk today, I was struck by how Filipina she looked, although her dad is Polish, mom Filipina. There are a lot of half-Filipino/a players (who I have bolded above). Treat Huey I always thought was pure Filipino, but you're right that he was Filipino-American. There are 4.2 million Filipino-Americans, and many more half-Filipinos in America -- a pretty high proportion of the Philippines' population, so your situation is somewhat unique. No other Asian nation was colonized by America, and the Philippines had exactly the same status (during the American occupation) as Puerto Rico has now. So the situation is not entirely comparable with other Asian countries. (To be continued...).
Yes Filipinos have a strong Tennis connection, having noticed it first when Zeeshan Ali was top 5 junior in the world while world #1 junior was Felix Barrientos of the Philippines.
The names mentioned in the above list are all well known Filipino's or with Filipino connections, but to add to the list is a top 20/30 world Junior ,Canadian Jayden Weeks who also is 1200 on the ATP, and like Desirae Krawczyk his mother is a Filipino Nurse.
But one conspicuous change which I have noticed is about MacKenzie Mcdonald who beat Nadal last week ,until few years his bio mentioned Scottish father and American born mother to Filipino parents , but now it has been surprisingly revised every where to Chinese ancestry, now it is quite common for many philipinos to have Chinese ancestry ,but her(mother) features resemble more of a Filipino rather than a Chinese.
Rajiv wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 7:04 am
17 year Chinese Shang Juncheng a teenage qualifier and one of youngest player in the Mens Draw Teenager created a slice of history on Monday in becoming the first male Chinese player to win an Australian Open main draw singles match.
He beat the experienced 74th ranked German Oscar Otte in a intense 3 hours of grueling 4 sets of tennis in the Australian heat, which only shows how a young teenager 17 yr old has the perfect physical attributes required by a player for the tour even at this young tender age ,while our highly feted ,pampered stars like Sumit allegedly was exhausted yesterday in his ignonimous loss.
I see this as a very significant result for Chinese Men's Tennis and envisage a lot of positive changes in the future with both the association and the players doing their intended tasks.
Chinese mens tennis continues to grow fast.
Yesterday, at Madrid Masters their #2 Zizhen Zhang beat Dennis Shapvovalov to make it to third round.
Today, 21 year old Bu Yunchaokete won his first challenger title at Seoul.
China now have 2 players in top 100- Yibing Wu (54) and Zhizhen Zhang (94) and 2 more in 100-200 bracket - Bu Yunchaokete ( now 167) and Junchen Shang (190).
