With the qualifications underway at Roland Garros, the Indian contingent has had a mixed bag of results. On day 1, Monday, three of our ATP players started out their campaign and Tuesday saw our sole WTA player enter the fray. While Sumit Nagal fell to the enigmatic Dustin Brown, Ramkumar Ramanathan had a difficult first match after the lockdown and lost to Frenchman Tristan Lamasine.
It was a tough loss for Sumit since the match ended with both players winning the same number of points – 82 apiece and Brown outdoing Sumit only on the 1st serve percentage and winners count – not unusual of Brown’s style of play.
Matters ended well for Prajnesh Gunneswaran though who made it through in a very quick 65 minutes against Turkey’s Cem Ilkel with a scoreline of 6-3, 6-1. Prajnesh played a tight match and it was heartening to see an 82% 1st serve percentage win stat, converting 5 out 9 breakpoints.
Speaking to Kosturi Ghosh after the win, Prajnesh remarked on the lack of matches and his form,
It’s pretty easy to assume that I’ll be a bit rusty. But most people will be given the circumstances, and nobody is very sharp or really playing their A game. At the end of the day, if I’m not playing great, then I will just have to find a way to be tough and find other ways to find answers and win and hopefully things will click.
I got through the first round today. I am looking forward to the second round. I played a good match and I look forward to trying to keep playing like this. My goal is to keep getting better since I know there are still things that I would have done differently, so I am going to keep striving to get back to where I feel I should be.
Prajnesh Gunneswaran shares his thoughts on his first qualification round win
Ankita Raina continued her journey through the qualifying as she defeated Serbia’s Jovana Jovic 6-4, 4-6, 6-4. The match was fairly evenly poised when Ankita clinched the victory, breaking Jovic at 5-4. It ultimately took her 4 match points. She now faces 22nd seed Kurumi Nara of Japan who is an experienced campaigner.
