[Brian Swartz]

It is now officially 2055. This week we begin anew our quest for a WTC Title against Italy, but while that happens it's time to take a look at the year ahead.

Sri Lanka Rankings Update

Anil Mehul -- 1st to 2nd singles. This may well be the last time Mehul is Sri Lanka's top player at the beginning of the season. With Manohar hanging it up, he's the only one of my original players from 14 years ago that is now left. I think he'll be relevant, though declining, for at least another three years on the singles stage; at the same time, it's worth keeping tabs on his trainer progress since he'll be the next one several years down the road. Right now he scores a 4.12.

Girish Girsh -- 5th to 4th singles, unranked to 612th doubles. Girsh struggled at the start, contributing to him losing three more matches(20) than a year ago; he also won nine more, a new high of 75. Late in the year he reached four consecutive finals(Cincinatti Masters, USO, Paris Masters, World Tour Finals) but did not win any of the events and had the crushing collapse in the World Team Cup. What he hasn't shown so far is the ability to consistently avoid major letdowns for a full year. That's all that's holding back from taking Mehul's place right now.

Shreya Ujjaval -- 52nd singles, 125th doubles. Ujjaval still plays too much but not as badly as he used to. He was able to consistently qualify for Masters events(five times) and had good, but not great results on the challenger circuit. No titles this year, although he did come close. Ujjaval is good enough to crack the Top 32, but whether he does or not is anothe story. He is improving quite steadily, up about 50 spots roughly from a year ago, but tends to bite off a little more than he can chew. It'll be an interesting year for him.

Prakash Mooljee -- 232nd to 72nd singles, 2120th to 617th doubles. Doubles success continues to evade Mooljee, but he had another outstanding year in singles. Like Ujjaval, he is now set to enter his 'Challenger Hero' season. He had a pair of futures titles and won all four tier-3 challengers he entered last season, but had more mixed results in the tier-2s; three early-round exits to go with a trio of titles and a runner-up placing. He'll be stepping it up another level this year, an early tier-1 is basically forced by the schedule, and after that he'll be playing his first slam in Australia. Results in those first two events will go a considerable way towards determining where he plays in the following months. There've been some great practice weeks lately as Mooljee is ranked as high as he deserves, perhaps even a bit too high. By comparison, Girsh was 98th at the same age plus six weeks, though he had done better in doubles(424th). This year Mooljee should either be just in or just out of the Top 32, depending on his results. He's not as good as the top challenger players yet, but he's getting there.

Ritwik Dudwadkar -- unranked. The newest addition will have a few weeks of practice before his first junior event gets him started. He's going to be a guinea pig of sorts in figuring out when to use Manohar's training services.

Manager Ranking -- 3rd to 2nd, 30.6k points to 33.0k. Finally passed Hayato, and -- assuming I can stay there -- the only thing left to do is the long, long slog of trying to narrow the gap to oprice, still almost 30k there. Not going anywhere for a while :P .