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Old 10-02-2022, 08:24 PM   #1294
Brian Swartz
Grizzled Veteran
 
Join Date: May 2006
Indian Wells

Once again, Cyprus is MIA ... but they are going to be here for Miami. Those guys are really annoying, and given that Themis Xanthos won here last year, it's a huge hit for him. Of those who showed up, the top eight seeds all made it through week one. Oleg Urazov pushed Ballok to three sets, Daniel Long made Bardales work through a couple of tiebreaks, but in the end there were no major surprises.

Cananis dismissed Ale Ballok rudely as we might expect, but the human question mark Eddy Copperfield pulled a stunner over Bardales, 6-3, 4-6, 7-6(2). I never know whether Copperfield is going to do something like this, or lose in the second round. He's an enigma. Jochen Weigle pushed Polychroniadis on paper - 7-6(4), 7-5 - but in actuality it wasn't that close. Just looked that way because there were very few break chances either way. The other Greek, Papadias, had the second surprise with a competitive win over Ben Faille. Having a higher seed this year won't help Faille if he doesn't take advantage of it - just the second meeting between these two and probably an aberration, but a missed opportunity for the top French player.

Copperfield almost did it again, pushing Renke Cananis to a third-set tiebreak before losing. Crazy stuff. Solitris Papadias pushed his big Greek brother to three sets also in a 6-4, 6-7(6), 6-3 defeat. Quite a pair of compelling semifinals against all expectations. Big tournament for both Copperfield and Papadias, and neither showing was expected. The final was quality as well, with Cananis winning the assumed matchup with Polychroniadis 7-6(4), 7-5. The #1 ranking was on the line here again, and it stays with the German. Both of them increase their distance on the rest of the field, while Faille narrowly slides past the absentee defending champ Xanthos into the #3 spot ... literally barely with half the points of Polychroniadis at #2. That's not a gap, it's a freaking canyon.

Elsewhere ...

Manoj Datar continues doing his futures thing, maintaining as much as he can, making the finals in both competitions for his most recent outing. Sushant Srivastava had one last chance to possibly make the WTC third round an event in Russia, but it was a stronger than expected field and he lost in the semifinal for singles. First round in doubles ... eeek. Had he won, he would have likely been ahead of Sankait by a single point. Long view and all that; Srivastava has regained the 'on-paper' status of best player from Sri Lanka, and he should maintain that for years. He's still inching upwards, but also still the 'third wheel' behind Datar and Sankait.

The news was better for Aparna Chandrasekharan. A third-round result in Barletta singles was nice, but not all that impressive. It's his third such showing, and there's been three-months-plus in between those results each time. But he followed it up on this occasion, finding the hardcourts in Nagoya, Japan to his liking and also the field there, which was somewhat weaker than usual. His first amateur-level quarterfinal finish, in both singles, and doubles, vaults him up to around 1950th on the singles side. This gives us reason to think he could be turning the corner.

Girish Raychaudhari had two more events, quarterfinals in one and semifinals in another. Generally the first 'fatigue hump' to get over is to reach about 2.0 endurance; he's at the high side of 1.8 I think so as much as anything he just needs to get older. I did a bit of benchmarking at his recent birthday with his skill/service training and I do think he's in a good position there, slightly better than the guys at age 15 I had in the other world. So continued patience *sigh* is needed.

Last edited by Brian Swartz : 10-02-2022 at 08:25 PM.
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