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Monte Carlo
As usual, there was some early carnage here. First-round victims were Andronikov, Srbulovic, and Cirakovic. Shyam Senepathy lost in the second round of qualifying, Ujjaval beat a qualifier easily in the first round. The other three had byes.
Anil Mehul found himself in trouble right away against Johnny Browne in the second round. Both players achieved five breaks of serve, but Mehul took 19 opportunities to do so and Browne needed only seven. That made it a tight one, going to 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-4 for the final but he did manage to advance. Bourdet and Gaskell were knocked out early, but the rest were able to move on. In the third round, Antonin Iglar's clay struggles last year revisited as he was eliminated in three sets by Zakirov. Mehul also exited, straight sets to Juan de los Santos. The Spaniard is only 22, but it seems like he's been around forever, and he's a bigtime clay specialist. Now that his technical skills are starting to come around, he figures to be a factor the next couple months. Shreya Ujjaval went up against Mooljee, and while he was expected to lose, winning only four games wasn't a great result for him.
Santos and Rui Padilla were definitely the most interesting quarterfinal matchup, a pair of unseeded Spaniards. Santos crushed him with a pair of breadsticks. Elsewhere, Mugur Kinczllers rallied to beat Zakirov, Caratti won in three sets against McCuskey, and Prakash Mooljee was opportunistic enough and good enough to win a fairly close one over Agustin Herrera, 6-4, 7-6(4). Only three of the top eight seeds even made it this far, but clay often does strange things. All three won though.
In the semis, Kinczllers took a set and then was knocked on his heels by de los Santos just like everyone else; 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 was the final. The second one was a shocker, with Gustavo Caratti upset despite being in prime form, Moolee with a deserved straight-sets win. I figured this to be as far as he would go, and a good effort to reach the stage of being knocked out by the king of clay. Perhaps not. The final against the upstart from Spain was the toughest match, but he prevailed again 6-4, 7-6(8), getting just a little more consistent pressure and outlasting his foe in the concluding tiebreak. A second Masters title this year in three events for Mooljee was definitely unexpected, and he leapfrogs both Mehul and also Caratti up to #3 now in the rankings.
Coming Up ...
Mehul's early loss will have him out there again at Barcelona next week, while everyone else waits a couple weeks longer for Madrid and Rome, and the Italian Open in juniors.
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