India’s top two ranked players – Prajnesh Gunneswaran and Sumit Nagal – conjured up impressive performances on two different continents and two different surfaces to conclude one of the brightest weeks Indian Tennis has had in the singles competition ever. Summary below –
Sumit ends runners up at Banja Luka Challenger ; upto career high ATP ranking of 159 :
“I could not put one ball inside court”, quipped Sumit after the final.
Barring a bad day in the office on the day of the finals, Sumit Nagal was pretty much at the top of his game for the rest of the week, making the finals of the ATP Challenger tournament on the clay courts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
At the back of this performance, he is now ranked at a career high ATP ranking of 159. He will next play in the ATP Buenos Aires Challenger in Argentine starting 23rd September.
Coach Sascha Nensel, from the Nensel Tennis Academy, who was with Sumit in Banja Luka during the week, shared his thoughts about the final. He said – “Today was not good enough. Nagal never found his rhythm and missed more shots than before. But congrats to his opponent for a really solid performance. That was another learning process for Nagal. He‘s climbing up the rankings, but there‘s still a lot to do to see him where we all want him to be. Now the goal is to stay healthy and perform well in the last months of this season”
Prajnesh makes SF run at the ATP Shanghai Challenger :
Prajnesh Gunneswaran was the top seed at this tournament and made an impressive run till the SFs, where he came up against an in-form Yasutaka Uchiyama from Japan, who ended up winning the title.
He next plays at the ATP OEC Kaohsiung Challenger 125 in Taipei, joining the big Indian contingent there, featuring Mukund Sasikumar, Saketh Myneni, etc.
Ankita makes QF of WTA Jiangxi Open with partner Eden Silva :
Ankita and Eden’s superb run ended at the hands of the second seeded pairing of Shuai Peng and Shuai Zhang, both former Grand Slam Champions, in the quarterfinals, not before they put up a great fight, losing 2-6 7-6(10) 3-10.
Ankita also put up a fighting effort to stretch the fourth seeded Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan to three sets before bowing out 6-2 4-6 6-3 against her.
