Top 5 most exciting matchups to watch out for in CTL 2015
The 2015 CTL season boasts a deadly line up of players, which is no surprise given the success of the first season. The six teams – Mumbai Tennis Masters, Nagpur Orangers, Hyderabad Aces, Punjab Marshalls, Raipur Rangers and one more from an as yet unannounced city – are teeming with an array of quality players from all over the world.The Mumbai team consists of stars like Richard Krajicek, Andreas Seppi, Flavia Pennetta and Sriram Balaji. The Nagpur Orangers squad, meanwhile, has Alex Corretja, Feliciano Lopez, Jelena Jankovic and Divij Sharan.Hyderabad has Thomas Johansson, Ivo Karlovic, Martina Hingis and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan, while Raipur’s team consists of Thomas Muster, Roberto Bautista Agut, Alize Cornet and Ramkumar Ramanathan.We also have Punjab whose line-up has big names like Greg Rusedski, Marcos Baghdatis, Elina Svitolina and Saketh Myneni, and the unannounced team is not without its fair share of stars either – there’s Rainer Schuettler, Fernando Verdasco, Heather Watson and Vishnu Vardhan.As all these players go head-to-head during the CTL, the audiences will be treated to a series of enthralling battles between closely matched players. Here’s looking at the 5 best matchups in store this season:
#1 Richard Krajicek versus Thomas Muster
A former World No. 4 player with 17 singles and 3 doubles titles to his name, Krajicek is famous for being the only player to defeat Pete Sampras at Wimbledon from 1993 to 2000. He achieved the feat in the 1996 quarterfinals, and he went on to win the title that year, his only Grand Slam triumph. Krajicek has a mammoth serve and an aggressive playing style, both attributes perfectly suited to fast-court tennis.
Thomas Muster, on other hand, is a former World No. 1 player; the Austrian legend has 44 singles titles to his credit. He has also won a Grand Slam title, winning the 1995 French Open during a phase of claycourt dominance that earned him the title ‘King of Clay’.
When these two legends face off in the CTL tie between Mumbai and Raipur, sparks are bound to fly. It will be a grasscourt specialist versus a claycourt specialist playing a match on a hardcourt, and there will be plenty of cat-and-mouse points on display.
Muster and Krajicek had a 2-2 head-to-head record against each other on the ATP tour, so there’s nothing to separate them based on that either.