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Australian Open
Lots of players to cover here, with Mooljee getting his debut. The big storyline is the fact that Iglar has beaten Mehul in four straight finals here. Would Girsh be able to break up the dominance that pair has shown down under?
Opening Rounds
As usual, I'll start from the bottom up. Prakash Mooljee had a fairly friendly draw for his first Slam, which is always nice. Could have been better, but could have been a lot worse at all. WC Nawal Sebban -- sorry, Deacon! -- was fairly easy pickings in the first round, 6-3 in all three sets. Next up was Elias Trulsen, my pick for the year's top riser. He dismantled Mooljee 6-2, 6-4, 6-2, and it actually wasn't quite even that close. Trulsen is in the shrinking class of players that are totally out of Mooljee's league, so I didn't expect much.
Shreya Ujjaval has stalled just outside the Top 50 it seems over the last few months. He had a nice run to the third round here last season. This time he won a tough four-setter over a spanish qualifier, then was smashed with only one competitive set against Afanasy Bereznity. Bereznity would go on to reach his second Slam quarterfinal in his last three(also at Wimbledon last year). If he gets some consistency, the 24th-ranked Russian could still be a threat to a lot of the players ahead of him.
Girsh and Mehul both cruised through the first three rounds. Girsh kept that going with a one-sided beatdown of Federer in the fourth, while Anil Mehul had a bit more trouble with Gustavo Caratti. The Argentine is getting more dangerous all the time, and took the first set before Mehul rallied for a hard-fought 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 7-5 victory. Caratti's serve was on point, taking the ace count 28-19, but it wasn't quite enough.
I'd expected to have Dudwadkar play his first juniors tournament, but I held off a week as he was worn out from his first few weeks of practice.
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