Friday was the making of Ramkumar Ramanathan.
It’s a convenient line, susceptible to all the inaccuracies of the genre. But as convenient lines go, it isn’t without truth. For, although > he lost his first ATP World Tour quarterfinal , 6-7(5), 6-4, 6-3 to last year’s runner-up Aljaz Bedene, Ramkumar showed he belonged.
Watched by Vijay Amritraj and Ramesh Krishnan, two of India’s finest, Ramkumar confirmed that beneath the gauche, polite exterior lie both a competitor’s prickly edge and a performer’s love for the big occasion.
Ramkumar appeared to have a clear tactical plan, informed by his strengths and nuanced by the opponent’s tendencies.
On serve, he looked to gain court position behind strong first deliveries: from here, he dictated play with his forehand, running around his backhand as he so often does. He chose his moment to roll in the kick-serve and followed it by looking to volley, either to the open court or behind Bedene, wrong-footing him.
In return games, Ramkumar was content to stay in rallies, playing conservative tennis, but waiting for something in his strike-zone to lay into and change tempo.
But it’s all well to have a plan. To relax into the moment and execute it, without letting the mind’s anxieties take over the trained, instinctive activity of ball-striking is another matter altogether. And it was at this that Ramkumar was so successful. Indeed, the first to crack in the first set was Bedene: at 4-4 in the tie-break, he choked a nervous volley into the net; he later double-faulted, allowing the Indian set-point at 6-5.
Ramkumar, in contrast, played it pitch-perfect: a big serve, backed up by heavy forehands that relentlessly herded Bedene out of the point. There was no let-up in the second set either. Until the tenth game, that is.
Ramkumar had had Bedene at 15-40 in the seventh, but the Brit wriggled out of an uncomfortable position. Perhaps it gave him just that touch of assurance — that feeling that the momentum might be turning — for he suddenly managed a look-in on the Ramkumar serve, till then so solid. Although he was thwarted by Ramkumar once, Bedene stretched him on the second set-point, forcing a forehand error.
There were signs late in the second set that Ramkumar’s legs were beginning to protest. His athleticism isn’t world-class, yet: he has put in the work and will no doubt get better, but it doesn’t come naturally. A lot of his scrambling these last few days has been fuelled by desire, but there is a point at which merely wanting it isn’t enough. And playing back-to-back three-setters at an intensity he isn’t accustomed to was starting to tell.
Often at this level, a marginal dip in the physical is accompanied by a mental slip-up. It happened early in the third set, and Bedene, who isn’t ranked in the top-50 for nothing, exploited it. But Ramkumar didn’t fade: the last game took ten minutes and Bedene needed six match-points to put the 21-year-old away.
Stan Wawrinka, the top seed, had indulged no such drama earlier. His 6-4, 6-4 victory over Guillermo Garcia-Lopez was his 10th straight win in Chennai; no one has taken a set off him in this time.
“Guillermo is a tough player,” Wawrinka later said. “So it was important to always keep the pressure on him, which I managed.”
The results: Quarterfinals: 1-Stan Wawrinka (Sui) bt 5-Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (Esp) 6-4, 6-4; 3-Benoit Paire (Fra) bt Thomas Fabbiano (Ita) 6-4, 7-5; Aljaz Bedene (GBr) bt Ramkumar Ramanathan (Ind) 6-7(5), 6-4, 6-3.
Doubles: Semifinal: 3-Oliver Marach (Aut) & Fabrice Martin (Fra) bt 1-Raven Klaasen (RSA) & Rajeev Ram (USA) 4-6, 7-5, [10-5].
On Thursday: Quarterfinals: 3-Marach & Martin bt Mariusz Fyrstenberg (Pol) & Santiago Gonzalez (Mex) 3-6, 7-6(3), [10-7]; 1-Klaasen & Ram bt Lukas Rosol (Cze) & Igor Zelenay (Svk) 7-5, 7-6(5).
