$15K+H ITF Futures, Chennai (March 21)

[Kumar]

It was a disappointing day at work for indians..


When I reached the court at around 11:00 am, the first thing I observed was PA looked more like Ajay... And yep, Kash pulled out with a shoulder injury (no other details were available) and our mouth watering clash went up in smokes

As to the match, Vinod had an easy time beating Ajay 64 62 , after racing to 40 lead in the second set breaking Ajay twice on love..At 3-0 Vinod also took a medical timeout to have a 'trainer' look at his shoulders..

Second match featuring SKS and Hemmes was a quick one too, with Hemmes easily winning 61 61.. SKS was inconsistent with his serve (double faults), lot of errors.. Insipid performance from SKS... Hemmes has very good ground strokes..

Third match Vishal versus Delgado.. Wind was really blowing today and Vishal had difficulty with his serve.. In the first set, he got broken in the third game.. Then with some inspired playing (a great drop shot) he broke Delgado in the 8th game to even the match.. But Delgado came right back to break him and take the lead 5-4.. After which he won the first set 6-4.. Second set was a washout with Delgado running away with 6-1...

When i left home for lunch, bofors and navdeep were battling it out with bofors leading 5-3 in the first set..

Also heard that Qureshi is not expected to make it (flight cancelled or something like that).. so this opens up the draw widely for Harsh Mankad / Vinod Sridhar to make it to SF..

Vinod(w) - Ajay 64, 62
SKS - FRed Hemmes(w) 16, 16
Vishal - Delgado (w) 46, 16

other results
Kamil Capkovic beat Nick Munro (lucky loser)
Gruber Konstantin beat Mayer-Tischer Peter.. This was an interesting match to the ears with Peter constantly talking to himself (very loudly) and Gruber with a musical grunt..

[sramu]

Kumar
Thanks for the nice report. Are you planning to go in the afternoon and watch Harsh / Jaco, Vijay, Karan matches and report ? If you can, we will all appreciate.

[PKBasu]

Heck, so PA has pulled out. Let's hope this injury is minor!
Good opportunity for Harsh and Vinod, though!
Sunil Kumar's inconsistency is his bugbear, but his game also seems unsuited to the clay courts.
Thanks, Kumar, for your intrepid reportage!!

[BSharma]

Thanks Kumar for the reports.

I hope that PA's injury is minor and he will be back on the court soon.

[Sandeep]

Thanks kumar. Hope PA will recover soon. This is very bad. It spoils his rythm. He was going great guns.

[Kumar]

12 Indians got to the first round of this ITF futures... And 8 of them were paired against one another.. So four indians through to next round (RB, HM, Vinod and KR)...NO KR didn't upset Eric Taino... KR got a lucky break when Eric Taino didn't turn up and was replaced by Ravishankar... And 3 of the remaining 4 against seeded players lost(Vijay, Vishal and SKS).. And the last one (VM Ranjeet) was down a set and 1-1 in second set against Wang Chung Hsieh (lucky loser for Qureshi)... If that match ends that way none of the indians would win against a foreign opponent.
I didn't watch the Vijay's match, but SKS match was pretty disappointing.. He was playing the higher seed and was not expected to do much... But one expected him to show at least some spunk... SKS performance was very listless and it looked like he was playing a player who is ranked at least 100 places above him rather than just 25 places above him...He rarely troubled his opponent who had very good ground strokes... And rarely ventured out to net (where he did okay)... Vishal fought well in the first set, but in second set he was just out classed...

I couldn't make it to HM/JM match and since Hindu Correspondent Keerthivasan was on-scene, we should get a pretty good match report in HINDU tomorrow... As per eyewitness accounts, Jaco had Harsh on the run racing to 1-5 lead before HM came back strongly to win 7-6 (tiebreaker) and then easily won the second 6-1... HM's lack of match practice may have contributed to slow start... After the last match got over on the court1, HM was back on court hitting with Bofors to get better feel of the court.. Tomorrow's match could be tough one for him (i don't think Vinod's should is a big problem)...

Then the match between KR and Ravi.. This was also a one sided match with KR holding serve(love games) first two times.. Ravi also managed to hold serve and score was 2-2...KR ran into trouble in the 5th game and had two BP against him... But with some good serving and unforced errors from Ravi, dug himself out of the trouble... Then trouble started for Ravi, as KR just ran away with the set 6-2... Second set Karan broke Ravi twice to take 50 lead before Ravi slowed the bleeding with a hold of serve... But Karan closed the deal quickly to win the match 62 61... It was a solid display from KR, who looked calm and unruffled.. Mistake free... He volleyed well everytime he came to the net, hitting one crosscourt BH volley lunging high to his left leaving the spectators spell bound (i exaggerate sometimes too)... But it will be interesting to see how he fares against No.2 seed Simon Gruel and quality opponent...

Vijay lost in straight sets losing the second one 4-6...

Then the last match of the day... With Qureshi not able to make it to court on time, Wang Hsieh was the lucky loser from qualifiers... Would VMR utilize this lucky break like KR? Only time will tell... VMR started off badly losing serve to be down 03... At 5-3 when Wang was serving to close out the first set, VMR had a great chance to make it even when he had three BPs (two on 15-40), but couldn't take advantage and lost the first set 63... Second set was 1-1, when I had to leave... I think VMR has a chance to win, if he can play the big points better. As for as Qureshi, as per the snoopy ears he is expected tomorrow morning...


1 A.QURESHI (PAK) / Wang Hsieh leading R.VIRALI-MURUGESAN (IND) 6-3, 1-1
K.GRUBER (AUT) beat P.MAYER-TISCHER (GER) 6-1, 6-3
P.AMRITRAJ (IND) / Ajay lost to V.SRIDHAR (IND) 36, 26
7 H.MANKAD (IND) beat J.MATHEW (IND) 76, 61
3 J.DELGADO (GBR) beat V.UPPAL (IND) 64, 61
J.SMIT (NED) beat vs A.FASS (USA) 63, 64
I.CEROVIC (CRO) lost to A.KHAN (PAK) 64, 76
6 M.OP DER HEIJDE(NED) beat V.KANNAN (IND)
5 D.SHERWOOD (GBR) / Nick Munro lost to K.CAPKOVIC (SVK)
W.JUN (KOR) lost to A.SANDBICHLER (AUT) 36 26
R.BOPANNA (IND) beat N.SINGH (IND) 64 63
4 S.FITZ (GER) beat R.EITZINGER (AUT) 64 62
8 F.HEMMES (NED) beat S.SIPAEYA (IND) 61 61
D.ISTOMIN (UZB) beat T.POPP (GER) 52 Retd
K.RASTOGI (IND) beat E.TAINO (USA) / Ravishankar 62 61
2 S.GREUL (GER) beat J.HASEK (CZE) (Three setter scores unknown)...

As to Kash's injury, I am guessing he will be fit in time for Bangalore futures... There was a rumour going around which I will report later (but you guys can guess it pretty easily too)

P.S When I mentioned that I was 'reporting' for Sports-india to interested spectators, I was treated with lot of respect ... Was very happy to hear One Sports Correspondent singing high praises for the work done by this forum...

[Dhruv]

I hope that the rumour isn't true because unfortunately that was the first thing I thought of as well when I heard about his injury.

I guess the Bangalore futures will tell the tale.

[jayakris]

Hey, please mention "Sports-India/ Tennis-India" when you are at a tennis event ..

Thanks a lot, Kumar, for the fantastic reports.

I have all the final results at the Chennai futures page,
http://www.its.uci.edu/~jaykay/tenn-res ... -0305.html

So, four Indians in the second round out of 12 .. The ones we generally expected to advance, have gone through so far (except for Sunil, who was going to be a longshot, as he got no help from the draw either).

The Vinod vs Harsh match should be interesting tomorrow .. It would be tough for Vinod if Harsh has got a feel for the courts (looks like he has, as he won 10 of his last 12 games today against Jaco after a slow start)

I think Karan will beat Greul tomorrow. But shhhhh .... Let us keep it quiet and not let him now know that we are expecting it. He will probably play without thinking too much, which means he will win

About t he rumor that Kumar is talking about, please don't report it Kumar (the next thing you know, people will say WE started it on the forum - I would like the players to not start worrying about our starting such things) .. Anyway, I would doubt the authenticity of such a rumor ... But who knows ..

Let's hope PA is OK with his shoulder .. I generally like the big serving guys taking frequent breaks between events anyway, especially after playing 5-6 matches on the trot, though I would have liked Prakash to get on clay sometime in his life -- he seems to avoid it like a plague

Isn't it nice to see Bofors getting that win and a point after such a long time?

Jay

[amr090]

wow looks like our anticipated high quality went up in smoke with half the people not showing up. well at least harsh and bofors made it through! bofors big first win back from injury. i want to see a harsh, kr, bofors semi if the draw allows it.

[jayakris]

I am not sure if a Prakash-Harsh match would have been as high-quality a clay duel as the upcoming Vinod-Harsh match would be. These two are probably our two best claycourt players (in Somdev's absence) .. This is actually more "mouth-watering" !

Jay

[PKBasu]

I just had a brief word with Harsh. He said the score-line was 7-6, 6-3! The conditions were terrible, with a very slippery court, a strong wind and "different" (I would translate that as inferior-quality) balls that were flying around. Harsh said he somehow found a way to get through this match!

[Dhruv]

Well Rohan will have another tough match tommorow against the German Fitz. Hopefully he is slowly working the rust out of his play and getting back close to the shape he was in prior to the injury.

On a side note Verkerk has also been sidelined injury (I believ Jay reported that a while back) and now Prakash with a possible shoulder injury... I guess some of these hard servers can have more injury problems than the pure grinders on the circuit.

Yeah yeah I know Hewitt just withdrew from Miami with toe injuries, that doesn't count.

[PKBasu]

Continued the conversation with Harsh, and drew him out a bit...He said the courts aren't really clay, probably something like cow-dung with some sand on top. (I know what he's talking about -- most "clay" courts are these brownish-grey muddy material rather than red clay; here, they haven't watered the courts properly and so the bounce is a bit dodgy). And the balls are Dunlops, but seem to be procured on the grey market -- because they have hardly any felt on them, and are thus very bouncy.

This is just shocking! How can they play an international tournament with such incredibly inferior equipment? Especially balls; the ones here appear to be (from the description I heard) similar to old practice balls that have lost a bit of felt. One normally discards them (even as practice balls) once the bounce becomes less true, and here they are playing a $15K+H Futures with such balls! Amazing stuff. Is it any wonder Indian sports is such a mess, when we have such lackadaisical organisers?

[BSharma]

Thanks PKB for the inside information. It is not the first time that inferior quality balls have been used in Indian tournaments and I have heard about them in the past. A really sad saga.

[amr090]

hmm, the balls and surface not being up to par in india...no surprise there. makes me wonder why the tournament surface was changed in the first place?