$50K Aptos(CA) challenger

[jayakris]

I had an important meeting to go to in the bay area today, so I went up that way yesterday - watched the end of HM's match and all of Prakash's match yesterday. Sorry I didn't get any time to put in an update yesterday.

Haarsh's match: I walked in just when they restarted the match. Boy was I suprised at how well Harsh was playing. I am seeing him play after two years (can't believe it has been that long) and there is no question that he is playing at a totally different level. His ground game, shot-making and variations are superb (easily top-200 quality if not much better). The biggest surprise was how much his serve has improved. There is quite a bit of sting and punch in his serve now, though the speed may not be more than 115-120 mph. I am fairly confident in saying that his serve is no longer a weakness (HM himself says that he has a lot of confidence in his serve these days and does not feel any problems because of his serve). Mamiit is a really solid player and just like we expected HM had to bring something extra to earn points - which he did. His first serve percentage was not great and that hurt him in the 8th game as he fell behind 3-5. When Mamiit served for the match, HM broke him right back with a superb drop volley and a winner with one of his true weapons, the forehand shot when he takes it on the rise. Then it went to the tiebreaker. They traded minibreaks in the first two points and then the next mini came on the 10th point where Mamiit got hold of what looked like a sure winner from HM and put in a backhand cross-court that somehow fell in - Mamiit shook his head as he did not expect it to fall in. 4-6. Harsh saved one match point on his serve but could not stop Mammit in the next. 64 46 67(5). I have rarely been less sad about a loss from one of our players, because I felt that there was nothing much Harsh did wrong in this match (except a slightly poorer first serve percentage than he would have liked). His game is really cooking. What we were guessing based on the Granby matches and back-to-back quality losses to Sanguinetti and Mamiit, that he may be getting ready for a move-up, is essentially correct. Harsh himself admitted that he is sort of "feeling it" .. Let us hope for things to go right from here on.

Prakash's match: First of all the sad part. He made a tremendous comeback after messing things up a bit in the first set tiebreaker. The sad part is that he was up TWO breaks and serving for the match at 5-2 in the 3rd. Total melt-down at that point. He was perhaps a bit over-anxious to close it out and missed a few points, and unnecessarily brought in pressure on himself and the match simply got away from him, as he dropped serve three times and lost five games in a row to lose the match. His basic problems are two -- First is that he is just way too impatient and commits to shots, it is pretty clear at some points that he had commited to doing a chjarge to the net and he did it even when the situation did not warrant it. This part of serve and volley will simply take time to improve (he needs to play more instinctively, rather than by commiting to it). The other problem is that he needs to get more accuracy on his groundies. He has powerful strokes on both flanks but tends to clip the net way too many times. He sometimes seem to get an adrenaline rush and goes for a flat forehand which rarely seems to work. He still needs work on volleying - he hits too many off balance ones after overcommiting to go up. Little things like that. Right now he is in a bit of a funk which he will come out of. The good thing is that all the pieces are there and he is only taking time ot put it together. That 135 mph range serve is a weapon, though he is not able to hit the ace on cue like the Roddicks out there - that will also come though. My constant comment remains that he needs to learn to use his ground game for bread and butter. I am very sure that if he had decided to rally a bit when things started going sour at 5-2 and 5-4 in the 3rd set, he could have bought himself some time to settle thing sdowen and regain control. His serve and volley is not polished enough to use as "bread and butter" when things go wrong. It is good to win him a lot of points when things go right though... Just my feelings. Vijay Amritraj, Stephen Amritraj and his travel-companion/coach Vik Chatterji were there. I talked to Vijay afterwards and he said that PA simply needs to keep doing what he is doing and get better at it, but he too admitted that he needs to learn a bit more patience. I think PA will come out of this and things can only improve for him. Perhaps he needs to get under a high-profile coach for some time and get a lot of the mental-adjustment strategies taken care of.

By the way, Michael Jessup is not sliced cheese. The guy can play. He was very good in college tennis, and had also reached top-400 earlier in his career when lack of sponsorship forced him to quit from the pro tour travel. He is diehard fighter though and he wins every non-ATP prize money tournament in the US west coast (apparently everyone knows that about him and he is considered a tough cookie, which he was - very solid; no big weapons but he is a "tricky player" as Vijay said).

Stephen said he is finally feeling injury-free. Like we guessed he was playing all those futures qualies not really for points but just get a bunch of decent matches under his belt after some 18 months hardly any tennis. Said he will be playing a full college season this year too, and will play in India etc next summer or if anything is there during the times when he can take off from college.

.. I will add any other interesting notres later.

Jay

[PKBasu]

Thanks for the wonderful eye-witness notes, Jay. Terrific to hear about Harsh's meteoric improvements. This is the year for him to make his big move, I think. He is still 24 (won't be 25 until November), so he has to make the jump this year. But everything suggests he will be a top-200 player by the end of the summer, and pretty close to #100 after the Chennai Open. The key will be to stay injury-free.
Like his dad (when he was young, and unlike the ageing Vijay) Prakash seems to have a problem with his temperament. But that he was up two breaks in the third set against a crafty customer like Jessup suggests that he has most of the tools (the 135mph serve being a WOW! factor).

[shyam]

On a side note, the Amritraj brothers lost their R1 doubles in three sets (again THREE sets) 3-6, 6-2, 2-6 to the 2nd seeds.