Three Indian singles players in the qualifiers for US Open, but what are their prospects?

For Indian tennis fans, action at the US Open begins a week early with three singles players taking their places in the men’s qualifying.

The top-three Indian singles bastion of Ramkumar Ramanathan, Yuki Bhambri and Prajnesh Gunneswaran find themselves drawn in competitive brackets, which will be whittled down from 128 players to the final 16. But, given the recent exploits – especially in case of Ramanathan and Bhambri – on the singles front in the men’s Tour, there’s no reason to shy away from having expectations from these players.

Mixing it up in the rankings

Of the three, the currently 225th-ranked Gunneswaran is yet to break into the top-200, with a highest ranking is 213 attained in the first week of August 2017. On the other hand, Ramanathan and Bhambri have been exchanging the tag of the Indian No 1 between them for the last couple of months.

On Monday, when the men’s singles rankings were updated, Ramanathan gained the lead over Bhambri by a narrow, two-places’ margin. Ramanathan being ranked in the 156th spot, then, also marked a new career-high in a year already filled with milestone wins and performances.

In the three-rounds of qualifying, Ramkumar and Bhambri will be relying on this consistency of theirs – along with their game – to guide them through. As will be Gunneswaran, who has posted a slew of title hauls in the Futures circuit in 2017 to make his mark in the professional circuit.

The pick of the draw does pit the 22-year-old Ramkumar against French player Paul-Henri Mathieu, Bhambri against the 22nd seeded Japanese Go Soeda, and Gunneswaran against the 24th seeded German Yannick Hanfmann.

But former Indian No 1 Somdev Devvarman believes that the trio have good prospects of coming up with a good showing at the US Open this year.

Is this a sign of good things to come?

As such, to Devvarman, all these match-ups are nothing but opportunities for the Indians to score pivotal wins in their career. There again, while it has seemed as though Gunneswaran has been seemingly obscured by his two compatriots, Devvarman pointedly mentioned the 27-year-old calling out attention to his match-up against the 133rd ranked Hanfmann as “very winnable.”

Continuing further in his assessment to The Field, Devvarman noted that while both Mathieu and Soeda were players who had had been ranked inside the top-50 – Mathieu even ranked as high as 12th in the world – their being in the qualifying draw was indicative of times having changed.

“Both of them are playing guys who are well past their 30s,” opined Devvarman, drawing a comparable reference between the age of each opponent Ramanathan and Bhambri are to face. It’s a valid point, too, with the injury-prone Mathieu trying to make a comeback at 35, having a dozen years’ head-start over Ramanathan and Soeda being Bhambri’s senior by seven years at 32.

“From Ram’s standpoint, it’s a chance to play against a quality player who is not comfortable on hard [courts] currently and so it will be a chance for him to win that,” added Devvarman, noting that except for a few tournaments on hard courts at the start of the year, Mathieu hasn’t really played on other hard court events. “From Yuki’s standpoint, also I think it’s a good challenge. Soeda has been one of the best players in Asia over the last few years and currently, Yuki is doing a lot better than him,” added Devvarman.

The biggest takeaway from these appearances is also crucial in shaping up the careers of the players themselves. “It’s matches like these that give you an estimation as to how our guys really are doing,” said Devvarman.

“Because they need to step-up at the Slams, they need to step-up at the bigger events and lately they started doing that. These are good signs and hopefully in the next few months, we will have a better idea of where they are.”