Shining Indians: News bits from this week's and next week's events
File Photo: Yuki Bhambri
The Bhambri run
After battling it out for nearly three hours with Jack Sock in the semifinals, Yuki Bhambri emerged onto courts just within a few hours to face Yen Hsun Lu in the finals of the $125,000 OEC Kaohsiung Challenger tournament. It was his second ever and the biggest ever final of his fledgling career.
Unfortunately, Bhambri lost the match 4-6 3-6 in 66 minutes. He went down in the finals to home favorite and top seed Yen Hsun Lu. The Taiwanese player, a former Wimbledon quarter finalist, proved to be too much for Bhambri to handle.
With early breaks in both sets, he was clearly in command throughout the match. He once again broke Bhambri’s serve in the finals game to clinch the title. Bhambri lost after double faulting when Lu held a match point. The top seed had a rather easy to the finals as compared to the long list of tough battles that Bhambri fought.
He had also entered the doubles draw along with Chieh-Fu Wang as a wild carded pair. They put up a good show en-route to the finals. They had knocked out the second seeds Ratiwatana twins in the very first round.
Their finals was against the top seeds Robert Farah and Juan Sebastian Cabal from Columbia. The Colombians opened with an early break in the first set to pocket it 6-4. The second set was also not very difficult for the top seeds. The underlings could however, not defy the experienced duo a win. The final score read 4-6 2-6.
A fact to be accentuated is that today alone, Yuki Bhambri has been on court for around 4 to 5 hours which could have heavily influenced his later matches.
He is just back from from an injury hiatus but showed no signs of that in the past week. After brushing past three lower ranked players in the qualifiers, Yuki Bhambri fought past some quality players in the main draw to reach the biggest final of his pro career. But, the weariness of playing tight matches in both the draws in addition to playing the qualifiers last weekend had debilitated him.
Yet, this week has seen him produce some of his best tennis so far. Alas, he is on the right track and is soon expected to break into the ATP Tour. He was a junior world no.1, an Australian junior Champion and a silver medalist at the Youth Olympics. Yet, these are not the accolades that we want to be his best.
These are mere harbingers of many more achievements he is capable of and these are what spur on Indian fans to yearn for something from this young lad. Something that could dwarf his junior career? Hopefully.
Today, by reaching the finals with victories over higher ranked opponents including upcoming American star Jack Sock, he has shown what he is capable of. This is not all. He has still more to produce. Though, he lost the finals tamely to Lu, he can still be proud of what he has done. Though he already has a Challenger trophy in his kitty, it was a simpler feat than this.
The $10,000 ITF combined Men’s and Women’s event saw two Indians emerge victorious. Prajnesh Gunneswaran and Syria’s Issam Haitham Taweel won the Men’s doubles title with a 6-3 6-2 win over Filippo Borella and Alexandr Spirin. The Women’s doubles title was bagged by Prarthana Thombare and Julia Valetova 6-1 6-4. Prarthana and Prajnesh has earlier last-8 and last-4 stage of the singles competition.
Other finalists from this week were:
At the $10,000 Kuwait F1 futures
Saketh Myneni(1) lost to Mohammed Ghareeb(7) 4-6 1-6
Saketh Myneni/Patrick davidson(2) lost to Lewis Burton/Marcus Willis(1) 4-6 5-7
At the $10,000 ITF event in Algeria
Shivika burman/Shweta Rana(3) lost to Sherazad Benamar/Amandine Cazeaux(1) 0-6 3-6
Shweta Rana(2) lost to Sherazad Benamar(1) 1-6 6-3 1-6
Indians in action during the next week:
Sania Mirza will be playing with veteran doubles player and former World No.1 Cara Black of Zimbabwe in the WTA Premier 5 event to be held at Tokyo. They have already won their first round match 2-6 6-0 10-7 against Flavia Pennetta/Kristina Mladenovic.
Mahesh Bhupathi/Robert Lindstedt(1) , Leander Paes/ Daniele Bracciali(2) and Purav raja/ Divij Sharan are featuring the doubles draw at the Bangkok ATP 250 event. In the same event, Karunuday Singh is seeded eighth in the qualifying draw and will face Macro Chundeli, seeded fourth, in the qualifying round tomorrow.
At the Malaysian 250 ATP event, Somdev Devvarman is seeded second in the qualifying draw and will play his qualifying round match tomorrow against Dutch doubles specialist jean Julien Rojer. This week’s hero, Yuki Bhambri, will play in the doubles draw along with SMA Syed Naguib. They are a wild carded pair and will face second seeds Julien Benneteau/Nenad Zimonjic in the first round.