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Old 03-01-2019, 04:52 PM   #890
Brian Swartz
Grizzled Veteran
 
Join Date: May 2006
Amateur Results

** Anil Mehul - 3, 19y 4w to 19y 16w
** Girish Girsh - 3, 18y 38w to 19y 5w
** Prakash Mooljee - 4, 18y 9w to 18y 45w
** Ritwik Dudwadkar - 3, 18y 44w to 19y 10w
** Sushant Chiba - 3, 18y 41w to 18y 51w
** Amrik Kasaravalli - 3, 18y 33w to 18y 41w
** Nasir Chittoor - 1, 17y 51w to 17y 51w
** Satyajit Guha - 0, NA

Amateur tournaments are for anyone ranked outside the top 1000. This doesn't last long, and generally requires players rated approximately 5.0-5.25 to succeed in. Strong players will be at this easily upon turning pro and leaving the junior ranks, which is why none of my prospects stayed here long. It takes four tournaments to get through at 6 points for a win; 20-21 points are required to get you to 1000th in the rankings. Of course you can skip them entirely, but as 64-draw events both singles and doubles they are worth the matches you can get, unless you are too good for practicing against players of this level. That would require a particularly prodigious talent (i.e., Kaspar/Gorritepe level pretty much) or a high aging factor. I'm getting pretty good practice results even with Chittoor. And you can see that only Mooljee actually won four tournaments at this level, meaning the others lost at least once.

Contrary to what I said before, Chittoor actually lost a close final in his second try, so he's already joined the well-stocked 'didn't sweep the amateurs' club. It was the usual deal against a high-skill, no-serve player who had 24 doubled faults but won over half of Chittoor's serve points. That kind of match is annoying and we'll see them for a while. Mehul being a late starter in terms of age is also seen here - but he plowed his way through in little time. With the later players I started doing, as I have with my latest pair, a tournament or two late in their final juniors year after the USO(J). Mooljee is the only one who seems to have sort of stalled a bit here, taking a lot longer between first and last amateur titles.

Chittoor got his first amateur win 10 weeks faster than Mooljee and a lot faster than anyone else - it'll be interesting to see how long it takes him to get through. You can pretty much count on Guha to have not won any events by that time; he'll sort of just get dragged up to futures 'before his time'. The other factor at play here is that Nasir, due to getting all the way through the doubles draw with having a top-quality partner for that and all, will be able to take more practice weeks in-between events. This is beneficial in terms of training efficiently, but will also serve to keep him at the Amateur level longer than otherwhise due to tournaments being more spaced-out.

Last edited by Brian Swartz : 03-01-2019 at 04:53 PM.
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