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Old 09-24-2016, 06:46 PM   #509
Brian Swartz
Grizzled Veteran
 
Join Date: May 2006
2048 Sri Lanka Rankings Update

Girish Girsh -- 1st singles. To put his 91 wins in perspective, consider that Mehul's career-best was 76. That's a rather astounding difference. He began the year tied with Iglar but that's a distant memory now after leaving the Czech legend in the dust, apparently for good. For now, it's simply his time to keep winning and maintain his perch for as long as he can. Well past his best tennis now, the writing is already on the wall.

Anil Mehul -- 4th singles(unchanged), 1041st doubles. As Mehul's decline proceeds, he will probably drop at least a couple more spots this year. He's not done yet though -- he actually won the same number of matches(73) as the previous year, with two fewer defeats, basically holding the line with the only difference being he was a bit more consistent but no longer a real threat at the big events.

Having considered how long to keep him as a singles player, I've decided to use two criteria: as long as he is still in the Tour Finals field, the top 8, and/or one of Sri Lanka's two best singles players for the World Team Cup, he'll keep focusing on doing as well as he can there. When he drops out of both of those positions, I'll switch to doing some doubles training and focusing on his development as a trainer. I've also decided to retire him at age 40 -- Girsh will actually retire first, as Mehul will be a better trainer due to better endurance and longevity -- so he has yet another 9 years. I think I can make him at leaste a 5.3 trainer eventually, but we'll see how it goes.

As for next year, I think Mooljee will surpass him but he should be able to stay in the top 8 for one more season, maybe even two more. As it is, he grades out as a 4.36 trainer right now, only about 0.1 behind where Anil Manohar was when I retired him ... and I haven't even started moving Mehul in that direction yet. By the time Manohar retired he was down to about a 1.0 endurance; Mehul will still be around 1.6 at that point by my calculations, so I should be able to play him more. I've never gotten an elite trainer before so this will be new territory for me, but I think he'll do very well.

Prakash Mooljee -- 19th to 8th singles, 197th to 545th doubles. Mooljee will probably drop off the national doubles team soon, but he's also pushing to join it in singles. He's exceeded both Mehul's(31st) and Girsh's(13th) ranking at the same age, and looks poised to seize his moment now. Anything lower than 4th next year will be a major disappointment, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him higher than that. Even though he lost a lot of matches he should have won, Mooljee's late-season charge to make the tour finals finished him at 58-21 ... again a little better than Mehul and Girsh managed at the same age.

Shreya Ujjaval -- 29th to 12th singles, 57th to 106th doubles. Ujjaval is still Sri Lanka's top doubles player, but has rightfully limited his appearances there as his singles career has taken off. I expect him to be an unprecedented fourth representative at the WTF next year. He's never going to be a challenger for #1, but at 25 Ujjaval can still get better for another year and is being managed reasonably, if not optimally. He's become world-class now technically and is a decent athlete, particularly dangerous on grass and clay.

Shyam Senepathy -- 85th to 69th singles. Senepathy sort of hit the wall at about 70th. His serve has become respectable but he's still slow and doesn't have nearly the baseline skills to be a top player. Unless he works on that more, I think he'll top out at about 50th. Good, but never elite.

Ritwik Dudwadkar -- 100th to 8th juniors. The final year in juniors is always interesting, and challenging to schedule. Balancing training with the need to stay ranked high enough to get as many beneficial matches in the big events as possible is an interesting conundrum. Can't argue with a 48-1 mark in singles this past year, and the number of players younger and ranked ahead of him is down to four. He's set up well for his final year of prep for the professional ranks.

Manager Ranking -- 2nd to 1st, 43.1k to 47.2k points. Still progressing well, and oprice still looks like he's going to hang it up whenever he's done with Iglar. I'm basically only competing with history now in this measure -- 3rd place is over 15k behind me.
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