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Miami Masters
There was a fourth Sri Lankan in the main draw for the first time in any major event. Shyam Senepathy made it through qualifying -- and was summarily dismissed by Spaniard Juan de los Santos 7-6(3), 6-1 in the first round. Still, a very good result for a player well outside the Top 100. Shreya Ujjaval matched up with another rising young player in Blagota Cojanovic, winning convincingly after losing a tight tiebreak in the first set. This was just a prelude to a shocking upset of No. 8 Elias Trulsen, 6-3, 7-5, in the second round. It was a huge win for Ujjaval, by miles the best player he's defeated even if Trulsen is off to a terrible start on the year. Smitala and Gilardino both lost their first matches but nobody else in the Top 20 failed to advance. Prakash Mooljee had a straightforward win over veteran Olav Birkeland in straight sets.
Form continued to hold for the most part in the third round. Anil Mehul was pushed to three sets but dominated the two he won against (26) Roberto Martin. Ujjaval continued to impress, handing out a pair of breadsticks to unseeded Lan-Feng Chen(CHN) to reach his first round of 16 in any big event. Perry Mockler(to Sampras) and Thiago Herrera(to Alberti) were significant upset victims only on paper. Mooljee learned how far he is from being the best in suffering the consequences of an unkind draw in taking just three games from Girish Girsh.
A shocking result for Mehul in the fourth round, as he roundly outplayed Garreth McCuskey yet somehow lost 2-6, 6-3, 7-6(4). For Anil to fall in the first week of a big hardcourt event is nearly unthinkable, as it is for almost any world no. 1. He had a huge edge in pressuring McCuskey on serve(115 points served to 74), won 37% of his return points to just 26% for the American, yet McCuskey converted 2 of 3 break chances and took the tiebreak at the end to pull off a collosal upset that will not soon be forgotten. Ujjaval stunningly kept right on trucking with a straight-sets dismissal of Agustin Herrera, Gustavo Caratti lost to Marcelo Herrera, and Sampras upended Gaskell in a long three-set match. Four upsets in four matches, and that was just the top half of the draw. On the bottom side, Girsh and Iglar continued to progress easily, but Bjorn Benda lost at this early stage for the second straight event, this time to Theodore Bourdet. Alberti nearly knocked out Mugur Kinczllers who barely survived his challenge in three sets.
All of this set up an extremely unconventional second week. The quarterfinals featured just three of the top eight seeds, all of them in the bottom half. In the top, McCuskey became Shreya Ujjaval's latest victim, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3. Rather astonishing to see the 57th-ranked Ujjaval take out a player that #1 Mehul could not. Sampras eliminated M. Herrera in another long three-set win for him. On the other side, Girsh continued to ease through flattening Bourdet, while Iglar narrowly escaped Kinczllers 5-7, 7-6(1), 7-6(3).
The semifinals were quite a pair of matches then. In the first, unseeded Shreya Ujjaval and 24th-seed Peter Sampras. I don't think I've ever seen players ranked this low make a Masters semifinal ... and to have two of them?!? Ujjaval was by this time exhausted -- he of course had not expected to make it nearly this far -- and was finally overwhelmed. Antonin Iglar nearly ended his losing streak against Girsh, but eventually succumbed 6-3, 6-7(4), 7-6(3). It was the only set Girish Girsh lost these past few weeks, as he easily dispatched Sampras to complete the IW/Miami double and his 5th Masters Shield.
Mehul nearly lost his #1 ranking and may yet do so in the months to come, while Ujjaval jumped more than 20 spots in the rankings to the low 30s, and Sampras' final appearance gained him several spots as well. It was a most unexpected turn of events here in Miami, and as attention turns to the clay season there are perhaps more questions than ever.
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