Fielding Sumit Nagal instead of Prajnesh Gunneswaran in the 4th rubber of Davis Cup tie didn’t payoff for the visitors, as the the 2014 US Open champion Marin Cilic took just 56 minutes to demolish the Indian lad 6-0 6-1. The magical duo of Leander Paes and Rohan Bopanna had earlier pulled off a thriller in the to kept India afloat.
Croatia beat India 3-1, thereby qualifying for the year-end Davis Cup Finals to be help in Madrid. Sumit Nagal shares his thoughts on the match after the disappointing loss.
Interview & photos by Vishnu Reddy, an ITD volunteer based in Zurich.
Q) You are generally one of the big match players in India. Obviously things didn’t go well. Thoughts on your match?
I don’t think the match was any close to where I could bring up my game, my energy. Things went very fast. He’s a great player, especially in conditions like this, where he is playing quick, it’s low bounce and he likes it. Today, I didn’t do anything to bother him. Unfortunately, that’s a part of sports life. There are matches where you know that you have to perform well, you take so much pressure knowing that this is it, and you go to court where you just don’t make anything. I think that was one of my days today.
Q) You were not slated to play to start off. When did you become aware that you are going to play the match today?
We had a chat last night and I was told that I will be playing today.
Q) What was the strategy coming in? What was the game plan you had in mind?
There were a few things that I had in my mind, but like I said it’s tough to do it well when I was not winning point from baseline. So I started losing my tactic, I started going for more serve, my first serve percentage was very poor as well. But this was all because I was missing too many balls, knowing that I need to be little bit aggressive. Just nothing worked out for me today.
Q) Where are you playing next?
I will be playing qualies of Indian Wells and Miami. That will be my next one.
Leave a Reply