$10K ITF Futures - Colombo, SRI (Apr 4)

[PKBasu]

Here are the singles results for today (I made three fruitless phone calls to them, but then discovered that the results had been updated on the ITF website -- but not on the SLTA website!):

2nd Round
Rainer EITZINGER (AUT) defeated Wang-Cheng HSIEH (TPE)
Philipp OSWALD (AUT) defeated Tai-Wei LIU (TPE) 62 61
Vijay KANNAN (IND) defeated Sunu-Wahyu TRIJATI (INA) 26 63 62
Peter MAYER-TISCHER (GER) defeated Prima SIMPATIAJI (INA) 64 76(1)
Rohan BOPANNA (IND) defeated Martin FISCHER (AUT) 64 63
Karan RASTOGI (IND) defeated Ranjeet VIRALI-MURUGESAN (IND) 61 75
Jaco MATHEW (IND) defeated Vishal UPPAL (IND) 64 64
Konstantin GRUBER (AUT) defeated Kamala KANNAN (IND) 63 60

Terrific result for Jaco, although Vishal would have been at a disadvantage on clay. Great to see the ease with which Bofors won. Unfortunately RB plays Karan in the quarterfinals (the upside of that being that we are assured of one semi-finalist).

[PKBasu]

Also one doubles result to report:
[SF] SINGH (IND) / UPPAL (IND) defeated FASS (USA) / LIU (TPE) 63 67(3) 63

Long day for Vishal, but it's good to see him continue his terrific run in doubles.
Bopanna/VKannan play Mayer-Tischer/Monroe in the other semifinal.

[jaydeep]

Terific results by Indians ... Yes RB/KR already promise one SF spot ... But Jaco having very tough opponent in Gruber ... God luck Jaco ... Interesting to see tussle between Rohan and Karan ... I feel Karan having upper hand on this clay court tussle.

Jaydeep.

[Rajiv]

oh rohan-v-karan , seems a mouth watering tie ,donot want either one to miss out but sadly one of them has to go
was looking at martin fischer bio the guy whom rohan defeated
fischer list his coach as "ajit alexander" just curious who is this ajit ,
has any one of you guys heard of him

[kiran r more]

The match of the day will obviously be rohan vs karan.One very experienced guy with a powerful serve and volley game,trying to come back after a long injury break.And the other a young teenager,with a solid base line game and good speed to cover the court,trying to climb the ladder in a hurry.

Vishal is yet again proving why he is known as the best indian doubles player after lp and mb.Ashutosh is also doing great job in doubles.Jacko's win is not surprising as he has been playing some good tennis.

[gvhvhg]

RB/KR should be a great match....Great stuff from Jaco and Vijay getting to the QF

GO INDIA!!

[Rajiv]

wow , good results for indians , bofors won , 4 & 4 , and also jaco with a fine win over the 2nd seed , 4 & 5.
vijay very unlucky to loose in 3 tough sets , tie breaker in final set
again an all indian clash in the semis but the good thing is that we are assured of a finals spot.
but the most hearting result is of rohan , and good to see him strike form and surely has cemented his place for the dc team.

[PKBasu]

Mixed day for the Indian contingent in Colombo. An absolutely sensational result by Jaco Mathew (who is fulfilling the promise he showed as a junior at last) and a very good one indeed for Rohan Bopanna, especially since this is on clay. But sad for Vijay Kannan, who put up an absolutely fabulous fight before going down in a long 3rd set tie-breaker. Here are all the results:

Rainer EITZINGER (AUT) defeated Philipp OSWALD (AUT) 64 62
Peter MAYER-TISCHER (GER) defeated Vijay KANNAN (IND) 67(8) 64 76(11)
Rohan BOPANNA (IND) defeated Karan RASTOGI (IND) 64 64
Jaco MATHEW (IND) defeated Konstantin GRUBER (AUT) 64 75

This guy Gruber was looking quite unstoppable in the earlier rounds, and it is truly a terrific achievement for Jaco to have beaten him in straight sets.

[PKBasu]

So we are assured of one singles finalist (either Bofors or Jaco). And the doubles final will be an all-Indian affair, between Uppal/AshutoshSingh and Bopanna/Kannan, after this SF result today:
BOPANNA (IND) / KANNAN (IND) defeated MAYER-TISCHER (GER) / MONROE (USA) 75 46 63

So Vijay had a heart-breaking singles loss that was partly compensated by a heart-warming doubles win (over the same guy!). This pair is looking very good indeed.
And Rohan Bopanna is well and truly back. His fitness level looks to be particularly good, now that he was made both the singles SF and the doubles final.

[jayakris]

Jaco's BREAKTHROUGH event!!!! .. Go Jaco .. From a fellow malayali, congrats, man! (I think he is a malayali ... there goes Jay, with his parochialism )

Rohan's comeback seems to be going very nicely .. It's great to see that.

Vijay Kannan -- oh boy, what a marvellous fight! wish he could pull through ..

Jay

[PKBasu]

Gruber, Mayer-Tischer, etc. have been stalking around all the Futures in India -- and were lording it over our players in the early stages (as indeed was Fass). What is really nice to see is that our guys' game appears to have steadily improved with this extra competition. It's a bit unfortunate that this is just a $10K (although the level of competition is only a bit below the $15k+H weeks, albeit without Mankad, Amritraj, Greul). Very heartening to see the improvements from Jaco (especially; I agree this is his breakthrough event), but also from Vijay Kannan, VM Ranjeet, Karan, etc.

[jaydeep]

Superb performance by Jaco beating second seeded Gruber ... Wishing as Jay is predicitng this will be his breakthrough event.

Rohan made sure that I ate my own words while predicting his defeat ... Straight two sets win by him ... Rohan is already taking care of below 400 players ... He is coming to the top without wasting any time ... Nice to see Rohan's come back ... Now Harsh and Kash has competition to keep their Davis Cup singles position ... Offcourse friendly competition between all these ...

Tough loss to Vijay Kannan ... But he fought gallantly with his opponent ... That would definetly help him in his future matches.

Go guys doubles crown is already ours ... Now Jaco/Rohan make sure that singles crown also lift by Indian.

Jaydeep.

[PKBasu]

Jaco was being overlooked for wild-cards in Indian events in recent times. So he has had to work extra hard to regain his place in the Indian pecking order. Even with this win, however, he barely breaks into the top-800. He really needs to gather some more points -- and hopefully won't be overlooked when allocating wildcards in the future.

[jayakris]

By the way, don't forget that Jaco is just 20 years old and he has just pulled off his biggest win over 422 ranked second seed! .. Fantastic.

Jay

[kiran r more]

great win by jacko.easily his best.rohan has shown that he is now match fit and it is just a matter of time that he regains his position.karan had an excellent circuit.we are,as usual ,dominating in doubles.