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More interesting news from the life and times of Sushant Chiba. We at Roland Garros in the schedule, and while the clay season didn't start well for him - QF at Monte Carlo, embarrassing third-round loss at Madrid - it has improved. Made the final at Rome, coming up just short in a third-set TB against Molyneaux. Heading into the SF, Chiba has guaranteed himself to surpass Prince Karl 'First of His Name' Kaspar for the first time and get back to #2 in the world. Kaspar suffered an early loss in the round of 16, and I've been hovering just behind him for months. Karl may have 12 more Masters than Sushant (19-7), 3 WTF crowns to my 0, and double the Slam count (8-4), but my prediction that I could surpass him for a time late-career is finally coming to fruition when it seemed it wouldn't.
And that's not all. Next up is defending champion and world #1 John Hart. Hart holds a 12-8 edge in the H2H, but in two meetings on clay Chiba has won both times. The last one was a Rome SF this year, a gross travesty of a match in which Chiba won all his BP, scattered 8 of 11 chances against, and basically performed highway robbery to win in three sets. If he can muster up another win against the pride of Ireland on this larger stage and claim a second RG title against whoever comes out of the other side - won here three years ago - he would be less than 600 points out of the top spot when next week's rankings come out. There's a chance, albeit not a very good one, that he could somehow find his way to #1 in the world before the sun sets on his time in tennis.
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