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During the week off, Anil Mehul was in action at the China Open(500). He lost to Blagota Cojanovic in the quarterfinals, his third exit at that stage of a 500-level event this year. In order to get enough matches in, he entered the doubles this week.
Shanghai Masters
Shyam Senepathy managed to qualify, and then was fed a pair of breadsticks in the first round of the main draw by McCuskey. Nothing really new there. All of the lower seeds advanced in a predictable first day. The next day, Janin dropped a set to Cirakovic before recovering for the win, but there were a couple of upsets at the bottom of the draw. Phillippe Besson knocked out Bourdet in the match of the round, 6-4, 6-7(2), 6-4; and Hugo Jurco shockingly dominated Srbulovic 6-2, 6-2 on the American's best surface. Gaskell also left early, an embarrassing loss to Finnish qualifier Kire Zopp, who would enter the Top 100 for the first time in his career as a result. Mehul won one qualifying match in doubles, but not the second one.
The third round had no more big surprises ... but several players came close. Mehul barely escaped Khasan Zakirov in a third-set tiebreak, Cojanovic pushed Shreya Ujjaval to a close third as well, and Niklas was given all he could handle by Luc Janin.
That left the quarterfinals with Jurco as the surprise entrant, along with the top seven players in the world. Prakash Mooljee had a solid straight-sets win over Caratti, Mehul surprised a bit by continuing on 6-3, 6-4 over Ujjaval, Girsh was pushed to a third but in full control most of his match against Tomas Niklas, and Antonin Iglar narrowly escaped his countryman Jurco, 6-2, 6-7(5), 7-6(4). That would have been an enormous win, but just a hair short at the end.
Three out of four semifinalists were from Sri Lanka. A nice showing here in the final big hardcourt event. Mooljee crushed Anil Mehul, losing only four games in the first match, while Girsh lost his second straight to Iglar 6-3, 7-5. In the final, youth was served again with a fairly one-sided 6-4, 6-4 victory to Mooljee, snagging his 5th Masters of the season. With back-to-back titles here in the fall, I think we can put his brief slump in the summer behind him. He's back to playing like the best in the world, as indeed he is. Meanwhile, Mehul dropped to 6th, just behind Caratti and Niklas. It looks like those spots could fluctuate all the way to the end of the year ...
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