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As for my players, Anil Mehul was a victim of a quirk of the ranking system. He was ineligible to play any singles events since he was too highly ranked to play any challengers(top 32 are forbidden). He dropped below that after the last of his challenger titles dropped off, but that was the last week of challengers for the year. To keep himself in proper match shape for the WTC he was forced to play a couple of futures doubles events.
Amrik Chittoor won the mid-level challenger in Toyota, Japan for a second straight year, while Girsh Girsh made another futures final before heading off to his first challenger event in Salzburg. It didn't go well -- he lost in the first round of qualifying. He's at a, well, challenging stage of his career that everyone has to go through. Futures tournaments are a little beneath him, but he's not good enough to move up. Until that changes, he'll be playing mostly futures which at least allow for keeping him in match shape, then doing as many practice weeks as possible in between and throwing in a challenger every once in a while until he can make his breakthrough at that level.
WTC Results & Draw
It was a surprise to nobody to see Austria beat Nigeria 4-1 in the Level 3 championship tie. That set the stage for the playoff draw, which appears to be completely random from everything I can determine. The four nations finishing last in their Level 2 groups and the four semifinalists from Level 3 are thrown into a hopper and paired off. Winners will play Level 2 next year, losers Level 3.
I was very confident of our chances so long as we didn't draw Austria again. The odds were with us, but stranger things have happened. As it ended up, we will face Nigeria. That's very bad luck for them -- we handled them easily earlier in the year and should do so again. They have now made the Level 3 Final two years in a row only to apparently have unfavorable draws in the playoffs essentially wipe out that effort.
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