Sumit Nagal becomes the first Indian to win an ATP challenger title in Europe on clay: Weekly round-up for the week starting April 24

Sumit Nagal becomes the first Indian to win an ATP challenger title in Europe on clay: Weekly round-up for the week starting April 24

ATP Challenger Tour

Sumit Nagal has been getting slowly getting back to form since last 2-3 weeks on European clay courts. This week he played at his peak as coming thru qualifying he won 7 straight matches to take the title at Rome Challenger in Italy and become first Indian to win an ATP challenger title on European clay.

The last major success on European clay courts in singles was more than 40 years back when Ramesh Krishnan had Stuttgart ATP title in 1982.

In other news on challenger tour, Sasi Kumar Mukund qualified for singles main draw at Seoul Challenger 125 before losing in 3 sets against fellow qualifier Yasutaka Uchiyama.

Also pairing of Purav Raja and Arjun Kadhe reached the doubles semi-final in Seoul.

These are results of our players on challenger tour this week-

At Rome Challenger 75, Italy (Clay)

[Q1] (12) Sumit Nagal (IND,347) d. Jacepo Berretini (ITA,442) 64 61

[Q2] (12) Sumit Nagal (IND,347) d. (2) Victor Durasovic (NOR,302) 75 57 62

[R1] (Q) Sumit Nagal (IND,347) d. (4) Francesco Maestrelli (ITA,172) 62 64

[R2] (Q) Sumit Nagal (IND,347) d. (WC) Fausto Tabacco (ITA,495) 63 60

[QF] (Q) Sumit Nagal (IND,347) d. (Alt) Max Houkes (NED,303), 75 60

[SF] (Q) Sumit Nagal (IND,347) d. (8) Joris De Loore (BEL,198), 26 75 64

[F] (Q) Sumit Nagal (IND,347) d. Jasper De Jong (NED,234) 63 62

[R1] Yuki Bhambri (IND) / Saketh Myneni (IND) d. Francesco Forti (ITA) / Francesco Maestrelli (ITA)

[QF] Yuki Bhambri (IND) / Saketh Myneni (IND) l. Viktor Durasovic (NOR) / Fernando Romboli (BRA) 67(3) 64 [8-10]

At Seoul Challenger 125

[Q1] (10) Sasikumar Mukund (IND,380) d. (WC) Woobin Shin (KOR,1036) 63 64

[Q2] (10) Sasikumar Mukund (IND,380) d. Eden Lesham (ISR,325) 06 76(4) 64

[R1] (Q) Sasikumar Mukund (IND,381) l. Yasutaka Uchiyama (JPN,277) 46 76(11) 06

[R1] (4) Anirudh Chandrashekhar (IND)/ Vijay Sunder Prashant (IND) l. Gabriel Diallo (CAN) / Aleksandar Vukic (AUS), 75 36 [6-10]
[R1] Arjun Kadhe (IND)/ Purav Raja (IND) d. Emilio Gomez (ECU) /Brandon Holt (USA), 62 64
[QF] Arjun Kadhe (IND)/ Purav Raja (IND) d. (PR) Denis Kudla (USA)/ Thai-Son Kwiatkowski (USA), walkover

[SF] Arjun Kadhe (IND)/ Purav Raja (IND) l. Yunseong Chung (KOR)/ Yuta Shimizu (JPN) 61 16 5-1

ITF Tour

On ITF tour, in Indonesia Ramkumar Ramanathan had third consecutive first round loss. But Digvijay Pratap Singh had a better week as he justified his 4^th seeding this week and reached single SF. again lost in first round at M25 in Jakarta. Hope they have better results in third week,

These are Digvijay’s results this week-

At Jakarta M25, Indonesia (Hard)

[R1] (4) Digvijay Pratap Singh (IND,524) d. (Q) Credit Chaiyarin (THA,NR) 33 retd.

[R2] (4) Digvijay Pratap Singh (IND,524) d. Koki Matsuda (JPN,890), 62 63

[QF] (4) Digvijay Pratap Singh (IND,524) d. (Q) Liu Hanyi (CHN,1976), 63 63

[SF] (4) Digvijay Pratap Singh (IND,524) l. (2) Yanki Erel (TUR,463) 36 26

With 8 points from this week Digvijay will move up inside top 500 for the first time in his career.

In the doubles final at the Jakarta M25, the second seed Parikshit Somani and Ray Ho (TPE) finished runners up to the top seeded Aussie pair, Matthew Romios and Brandon Romios, after a 57 46 final.

Parikshit/Ray had beaten the 3rd seeds in a 67(5) 76(1) [10-1] in SF.

The top seeds had beaten unseeded Sai Karteek Reddy Ganta and Teertha Shashank Macherla 64 64 in the QFs .

On womens side, Rutuja Bhosale had a great run to the singles SF in Nottingham where she lost veteran 3^rd seed Arina Rodionova who on went on to win the title again this week repeating her last week title. With this run, Rutuja will move somewhere in 360’s in the WTA singles ranking getting close to her career high ranking of 342 which she had achieved in 2019.

Rutuja also made it to doubles final this week.

These are her singles results this week-

At Nottingham W25, Great Britain (Hard)

[R1] (8) Rutuja Bhosale (IND,403) d. Jia-Jing Lu (CHN,425) 61 64

[R2] (8) Rutuja Bhosale (IND,403) d. (Q) Danielle Daley (GBR,1031) 61 60

[QF] (8) Rutuja Bhosale (IND,403) d. Johanne Christine Svendsen (DEN,431), 57 64 62

[SF] (8) Rutuja Bhosale (IND,403) l. (3) Arina Rodionova (AUS,293), 16 16

Ankita Raina played in higher level W40(+H) tournament in France but lost in first round against Indian British player Naiktha Bains.

Ankita did reach the doubles final where again she lost to Naiktha and her partner.

At W40+H Calvi, France (Hard)

[R1] (8) Ankita Raina (IND,224) l. Naiktha Bains (GBR,338) 67(5) 46

There was another good run on womens side as 18 year Vaishnavi Adkar made it to W15 in Tunisia coming thru qualifying draw before losing to second seed there.