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Old 04-12-2019, 06:54 PM   #962
Brian Swartz
Grizzled Veteran
 
Join Date: May 2006
Sushant Chiba did everything he could to avoid qualifying for the WTF, losing in the first round of the Swiss Indoors 500 to Spaniard Calisto Aviles - ranked all of 48th - by a 6-3, 6-4 count. The only player to take advantage of this was Srba Dogic, who made the final but was thankfully beaten there by Balzer.

Race Standings

So Seamus Hughes is in. One more spot to fill, and here's how that looks going into Paris.

Sushant Chiba - 4120
--------------------------------
Srba Dogic - 3640
Mike Rhodes - 3490
Harald Balzer - 3175

If Dogic had won the Swiss Indoors, he would be just 280 points behind. Which probably would still have been too much.

Stachovsky is at 3125, meaning even if he won the title - he made the QF last year, his only Masters appearance that far on record - Chiba would get 10 pts for merely showing up and that would keep him five points ahead. Rhodes and Balzer would each need to win the tournament in order to catch Chiba, a remote possibility. Dogic would only have to reach the final. On his end, Sushant needs to reach the final in order to guarantee the final spot. If he loses in the semi, Dogic could win the trophy and still beat him. All of which boils down to basically waiting for our three technically-still-alive longshots to lose. As soon as they do, my embarassing vet backs his way in for one last hurrah. His impressive record of futility at the WTF - five straight appearances, all ending in a round-robin exit - has I'd say over a 99% chance of being extended.

Elsewhere ...

Orleans did indeed go to Amrik Kasaravalli, who edged Wentz and then had an easier time in the final. He took a week off, and then entered CH2 Charlottesville, which has by far the weakest field for some reason of this week's four CH2 events. Only one other player in the Top 100, so he should be able to waltz through. Nasir Chittoor and Satyagit Guha took more time to train, but that's about to end. Chittoor was getting 'meh' results from practice, and I thought about throwing him back out into a tournament early. I decided against it because that would mean moving up a level and then possibly reaching the final in suboptimal form, resulting in more chance of losing. So instead I put him out for more practice on his weaker surfaces. Results that way have been better, but not great. Both of my youngsters are now facing a problem of being underranked and need to get more points and boost their competition. Guha is playing an amateur this week to do that - singles only as his doubles ranking is too high, but he's not good enough to handle futures-level singles opponents. Then we'll make the jump to a FT2 event the following week, and see what shakes out after that.

I'll track the Paris results today as long as it is relevant to the Race.
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