At the Aircel Chennai Open, Ramkumar Ramanathan’s stock in the recent years has been built on one memorable victory over Somdev Devvarman in 2014 and a run to the quarterfinal last year.
On Tuesday, he gave the impression of someone resting purely on those past laurels, slumping to a dispiriting 53-minute 6-1, 6-1 loss to Yuki Bhambri.
For the 22-year-old, it was, more than anything else, the harshest of lessons on the unforgiving nature of tennis where one is only as good as his last result.
“I couldn’t have played better,” said Bhambri after the match.
But the 24-year-old didn’t even have to bring out his best to beat Ramkumar.
In the opening four games, local lad won a paltry four points. For the whole match, it was 25 out of 80.
Bhambri played the smarter tennis. He hurried Ramkumar and made quite a few forays towards the net. He was aided in no small measure by an opponent who repeatedly hit short.
And on the few occasions that Bhambri’s approach was off the mark, Ramkumar failed to make him pay. Like, in the seventh game, down 1-5, he had both the player and the court at his mercy but drilled the ball straight at Bhambri who redirected it for a winner.
If there were even faint hopes of Ramkumar turning the tide in the second set, they quickly evaporated as he fell 5-0 behind, and it was only a matter of time before Bhambri ended his misery.
“I just didn’t take the foot of the pedal,” said Bhambri, who will meet Benoit Paire next. “I tried to get as many breaks as possible. I just need to serve better and return better. These things make life easier.”
Saketh Myneni, India’s highest-ranked singles player, took the court immediately after, against Mikhail Youzhny. For a fair amount of time he even succeeded in getting the crowd interested. At 2-2 in the first set, he earned a break point.
But some poor judgement let him down; he left alone a ball which he thought was sailing long only for it to drop inches in.
At 4-5, he served a double-fault on game-point. From that moment, the set could not be salvaged, and a few minutes later it was clear that the match was lost too.
The Russian won 6-4, 6-3.
Earlier, Aljaz Bedene played inch-perfect tennis to beat Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 6-3, 6-3.
The scoreline belied the stature of a player like Garcia-Lopez, who has to his name five Tour titles. But Bedene was clinical.
Even though the Briton’s serve was a tad underwhelming, the forehand — his primary weapon — worked as well as he would have hoped.
On his part, Garcia-Lopez did hit a few delectable shots, but they were so few and far between that they hardly hurt Bedene.
