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Indian Wells Masters
Shreya Ujjaval improved slightly on his first-round exit a year ago, beating journeyman Falk Gries of Germany in the first round before a competitive loss to 12th-seed Marcelo Herrera. This will help him bounce back a bit, as his ranking is slipping -- he was down well into the 60s coming in.
Our power duo had little trouble in the first week. Girish Girsh had his second competitive matchup with Alberti in the fourth round, but got through in straight sets. The quarterfinals had him matched with Perry Mockler, who backed up a surprising run at the AO by upsetting Gaskell in the previous round. He kept it going here, as Girsh thoroughly embarrassed himself after taking the first set in a 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 setback. He was just 1 of 9 on break chances in an evenly played match. Mockler is on fire right now, but it's still humiliating -- Girsh should virtually never lose to a player of this caliber, and he hasn't been able to sustain the momentum from the end of last year unfortunately.
Anil Mehul trounced Elias Trulsen, while another surprise quarterfinalist, Theodore Bourdet, almost upstaged Benda before falling in a heartbreaker, 5-7, 7-6(2), 7-6(4). Hard to play better than that without winning. Mockler had the next shot at Sri Lanka's best player, and he gave it a run but Mehul stopped him in a serve-dominated match, saving all three break points he faced.
Antonin Iglar was the opponent in the final as you'd expect. He looked to be in pretty dominating form here and that didn't change. Mehul hung in for most of the first set but the dam broke towards the end of it in a 6-4, 6-1 defeat, ending a career-best 20-match win streak to start the year. He only managed to get one break chance on the Iglar serve -- the world no. 1 was in legend mode this fortnight, nobody was going to beat him, nobody came close to even taking a set.
Elsewhere ...
Prakash Mooljee stared at the Kyoto(tier-2 challenger) draw in a bit of disbelief when he saw more late entrants, among them Joseph Skirrow to whom he'd lost his last match. Both cruised to the semis, but this time Mooljee won 6-4, 7-5. He thumped German Djurdje Moicevic, who he's had trouble with in the past, in the final to claim his first title of the year and 8th challenger overall. He also did much better in doubles than usual, qualifying and reaching the quarterfinals. I think the win over Skirrow(presently 46th) was his first over a Top-50 player. He's also been doing a little better against players of that level in practice weeks, though he's still not a match for the best of the challenger players yet. It's progress though, and he's up into the mid-50s now.
Ritwik Dudwadkar had a tough day at the Noumea JG5, losing both qualifying matches. His singles match was a weird one -- two close tiebreaks went against him, in a match that saw 22 breaks in 24 service games.
Coming Up ...
The big guns have another Masters in Miami. It'll be a busy week again, with Mooljee probably heading to Africa for another tier-2 challenger, and Dudwadkar hoping the fifth time's the charm in terms of getting his first solo juniors victory.
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