Our pairing of Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan and Arjun Kadhe defeated Marcus Daniell / Luis David Martínez in R1 by 6-4 6-2 scoreline to move into the quarters of the US Mens Clay Court Championships ATP 250 event in Houston.
Mahitha Dadireddy caught up with the team post the match to get their thoughts
Thoughts on the match
Arjun Kadhe: The start was a little shaky from us. We didn’t really start hot but I think in these conditions you have to keep playing and we got it right back and after that I think we were in control most of the match and I think we did a good job to close it out.
Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan: Arjun covered it. It was a really good week so far especially with Raven Klassen helping us out in the double dream of India. It’s also nice to see that a lot of us have won our first round here so it’s a good initiative and finally we are reaping some rewards from the program.
On the preparation coming in
Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan: We had worked on a few things over the past couple of weeks and we’re just trying to get better each match. Under pressure we were able
to execute a few things which we’ve been working on so yeah as far as the game plan is concerned: Everyone here on the tour kind of knows each other pretty well so yeah there is a rough outline of each team but most of it is just you know what we can control.
To Arjun Kadhe: You have cracked top-100 and now you are closer to OSU – how do you feel?
It’s great, I am excited to be back and obviously playing a tour event is always what you’re looking for to play. It’s really one of the nicest events I’ve been to, so yeah I’m waiting for my chance to go back to college but yeah very close so hopefully someday I get the chance soon.
To Jeevan: You’ve played here as well right a couple of times before?
Yeah, this is my third time here and it’s a fantastic event. I think everyone here does a great job making the players feel at home, just a wonderful tournament and you know we’re just grateful to have an opportunity to play and looking forward to making the most of it this week.
Okay, how’s the clay different from the one you played in Naples last week?
I mean they changed it to the red clay here. I think this is honestly to me one of the most similar surfaces to Roland Garros because even French Open plays pretty quickly so I think that the clay is actually really good here and plus you know hot conditions today also help playing quick doubles points so yeah we’re happy with everything over here.
You are up against your good friend Sriram Balaji in the next round.
Arjun Kadhe: I’m really happy to hear that they beat a world class team and we are also excited that we won and yeah it’s a new match. We’ll probably think about that match tomorrow but today it’s all about this match and trying to recover.