[Brian Swartz]

I've now hired my fourth player to fill out the roster: 18-year-old Aparna Chandrasekharan. He's spent four years doing jack diddly squat and has never played in any tournaments so far as I can tell - the game's logic doesn't bother for players below a certain point. On that fact alone we don't expect him to be a major success.

I have two purposes in hiring Chandrasekharan:

- Be mildly annoyed spelling out his name regularly.
- More seriously, fill in the gap between Raychaudhari and Srivastava. At least I'll be working on somebody who can help Sri Lanka maintain as respectable a position as possible in the WTC while I fill the pipeline with better talent. Between Aparna and those other two there is a 4-5 year gap in each direction. And he's by far the best option anywhere near his age group, one of the best NatGens that Sri Lanka has.

- 2.5 Skill, 1.3 Service, 1.3 doubles to start. That's basically the development of a 16-year-old, so we can essentially call it two years of improvement flushed down the drain, never to be seen again.

- Aging Factor: 96%
- Talent: 4.3
- Mentality: 2.4
- Peak Endurance: 3.4-3.5
- Peak Strength: 2.5-2.6
- Peak Speed: 3.1ish

Since he's sitting on zero form, which results in -1.5 Skill, -1.5 Service, and 55% xp gain, Chandrasekharan's development strategy to begin with is 'play as many matches as possible until he's not totally useless'. Then push Service ahead somewhat but he's fairly close to balanced, and since last year was the last time he was eligible for juniors, he'll see if he can get anything done in the amateur ranks.

Might take a while, but there's definitely still quite a bit that can be done with him by current national standards. If he was trained up right away, I think Aparna could have made a professional of himself - not a great one, but a pro nonetheless. Now we're probably looking at Challenger level, but still Top 100 for him at peak. Play a few Slams here and there, be the kind of player that the contenders blast through on their way to winning titles.

That wiped out my manager points almost entirely, but I have no intention of buying anyone else anytime soon, barring a very fortunate NatGen coming our way.