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Paris Masters
The last Masters event of the year is unique in several aspects, and relatively speaking fairly chaotic -- especially for player in Mehul's ranking range. It is the only Masters event played on the indoor/carpet surface, and advantage as he's fairly strong in that area. It also has the smallest field, just 48 entries. 16 of these are seeded, the next 16 are direct entry but four of those are wild cards. Then there are also 16 qualifiers, and Mehul found himself as one of the best in this group. In reality all that really meant was an extra, nearly-free 25 point for going through against much weaker players in qualifying.
Since all of the seeds get first-round byes though, after a double-bagel win in qualifying he had good chances for a fairly easy match to start the main draw. What he got though was French wild-card Roman Iraugui(41st), a player who is on his way up and near the peak of his powers. In overall physicality he's one of the best out there and frankly should be a higher-ranked player. Especially with the home crowd behind him, it looked likely Mehul would be exiting after this match. Iraugui has probably been mismanaged, and he's overplayed some coming into this event but not overly so.
It was not that Mehul didn't have his plusses(better baseline game, more indoor familiarity, perfect preparation coming in), but it with a considerable gap in athleticism and also a smaller one in mental toughness, the Frenchman did appear to be a definite favorite. There may be no surface on which the athletic element means less than lightning-fast indoor, but I was still pretty shocked by the scoreline. Mehul trounced Iraugui, 6-1, 6-1, a pair of breadsticks! The result would have been quite frustrating were I on the other end of it, but in this case of course I was quite pleased.
Up next was 13-seed Jens Oberg of Sweden, a flash-in-the-pan or phoenix type of player who was already on the decline just past his 24th birthday. Oberg had been ranked as high as 7th in the world within the past year. Overall it figured to be a pretty even match with Mehul a slight underdog. Unfortunately this one was a surprise in the other direction with Oberg waltzing through a 6-3, 6-3 win. A late rally by Mehul in the second set was cut short as a double-fault set up match point, and that was it.
With the loss, it is more likely than not that he will not make into the seeds for next year's AO but fall a bit short, though much has yet to be determined. Meanwhile, Amrik Chittoor was in action, entered in a mid-level challenger in Eckental, Germany. He was upset in the quarterfinals in three sets by American Ralph Kippen, a match neither player played well in but one he should have won.
There will now be a break of several weeks leading up to the WTC playoffs, which will once again launch a busy period heading into the next year regardless of what happens there. In the interim there won't be anything bigger than Challengers for any of the players to participate in, so I'll once again recap the results once that important tie arrives.
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