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October
Sushant Chiba played the Swiss Indoors 500 (Indoor, as everything is this time of year and duh it's in the name of the tournament) as a warmup for Paris, but it didn't go as planned. For the first time - although it was only their second-ever meeting - he was defeated by Amrik Kasaravalli, 7-6(2), 6-2. I was surprised by this result. Kasaravalli had another close-but-not-good-enough event in a 250 the week before, a 3-set QF defeat to Rhodes, but this was a big win for him and his first good event in a while. Making the semis of a 500 equals his AO 4th round as the best event of the year, points-wise. Mpakati made short work of him at that stage, but beating Chiba, who is still a slightly better player by rating, is a positive indication.
Satyagit Guha was also out there for a rare 'solo' tournament opportunity. It was his first such F2 (Germany, Clay) after I determined the draw probably wouldn't be any tougher than the available F3s. Teaming with China's Yu-hsui Cheng as the top-seeded doubles team, they endured only one close match and won the title without dropping a set. As the 8-seed in singles, he upset 1-seed Zdenek Zbibley(CZE) in a 6-3, 5-7, 6-4 semifinal. Zbibley was an extreme no-serve, high-skill player, with 5.2(!!) skill but 1.3 serve and was tired. A bizarre statline had Guha with 18 aces and no double faults, while Zbibley had no aces and 24 doubles. Then a narrow defeat to 4-seed Arsenio Inarra of Greece in the final; a third-set tiebreak there. So it was a heck of a tournament for Guha and a couple of epic matches near the end of it.
Nasir Chittoor just had practice events.
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