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January
As mentioned before the only tournament was Girsh playing in the Sao Paolo Tier-1 challenger. It was really quite the fitting microcosm of the current stage in his career: he beat 4th-seeded Ivo Montalvo(ARG, 56th), a clay-court specialist, in a tough first-round match 6-4, 7-6(9). American Tommy Day(87th), beat him easily in the next match 3 & 3 however. These are exactly the kinds of players he'll need to get past to take the next step.
A couple of observations are worth noting heading into the AO, which has now begun. Gabriel Alastra and Spasoje Kucerovic have now removed themselves from singles altogether, which will lead to more opportunities for the younger players. It seems their manager is headed towards making Alastra a trainer as soon as possible, or else he just wants a good veteran doubles team. The former is more likely, he has a 4.5 and a 4.9 but Alastra could be made a 5.0 easily. Regardless of the why, Alastra has now essentially resigned any impact on the singles scene.
Also, Amrik Chittoor has now not played any events aside from the WTC in several months. He's in free-fall, and is probably going to be basically useless in the next round for Sri Lanka. This will cause quite a problem as losing to Israel is actually quite likely since he's almost certainly not going to fall far enough for Girsh to take his place until later. His manager, having never discovered what practice tournaments are for, appears to have abandoned the game and my task is going to be more difficult for it. This is a great time to perhaps trumpet the 'Holiday Mode' option which allows for players to enter tournaments as if they weren't human-managed if the manager wants to leave the game, even temporarily. I suspect a lot of managers aren't aware of the option, esp. new ones(I don't even know where it is, but it's in the documentation somewhere).
At any rate, the AO is next on the docket. Mehul is defending a 4th-round result while Girsh makes his debut.
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