Curious is the weight expectations exert — and especially curious how swiftly it shifts.
>Ramkumar Ramanathan had said ahead of the tournament , and Borna Coric had knowingly agreed, that playing the top-rankers, while potentially painful on court, had its advantages; there was little to lose and plenty to gain.
So, the prospect of Kevin Anderson, even all 6ft 8in of him, while formidable, wasn’t frightening. For >Anderson to suddenly pull out and a standby take his place altered matters significantly.
Ramkumar was now expected to win and >make his first ATP World Tour quarterfinal ; it didn’t matter that Alexander Kudryavtsev was ranked 84 places higher.
For Kudryavtsev, who got in as a lucky loser, the position of affairs was exactly the opposite: having been defeated in the qualifying on Sunday, here he was, with Anderson’s bye, so to speak, in the round-of-16.
The match, therefore, was as much a contest of tennis as one of managing the pressure of expectations: it’s a measure of Ramkumar’s quality that he won both, sending a frenzied Stadium Court crowd into raptures.
The 21-year-old’s 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 win advanced him to his first ever quarterfinal at this level; the last Indian to make the last-eight here at the Chennai Open was Yuki Bhambri, in 2014.
The first set was tactically underpinned by Kudryavtsev’s smart use of the serve to set up points. He moved it around the box and had the Indian off-balance. Ramkumar, as a result, wasn’t able to get as much body into his ground-strokes — without enough muscle, the top-spin dragged the balls down short for Kudryavtsev to pick off.
The Russian also chose his moments well while returning. His ability to step into the court and flatten his stroke, occasionally even jump-shot his two-fisted backhand, brought rewards.
Ramkumar, however, had played smart, brave tennis, often making the right decision. It was largely his execution that had let him down when he had his moments. He fixed that in the second. Helped no doubt by Kudryavtsev’s growing frustration with the crowd calling out between first and second serves, Ramkumar refused to give up during an elongated seventh game.
He made incredible ‘gets’, lifted a lob that had no margin for error over Kudryavtsev and onto the last millimetre of the baseline, and eventually broke serve when his opponent threw in a double-fault.
He handled the pressure of consolidating the break; he then dealt with the letdown that comes with missing a set-point — this on the Kudryavtsev serve — and the distraction of his opponent mimicking his little good-luck routine to serve the set out.
Ramkumar looked the more solid, more focused player in the decider. He embraced the pressure and fed off the crowd, making his play in the seventh game.
He then proceeded to close the match out with the authority of a veteran. Two punishing serve-and-forehand combinations capped a quite remarkable fight-back.
Also in the last-eight are Aljaz Bedene, who Ramkumar will play, qualifier Thomas Fabbiano, who upset Gilles Muller, and No.3 seed Benoit Paire, who won a wild, entertaining battle of the hot-and-colders against Lukas Rosol.
Amidst the fun and games for the fans, however, was some disappointment: Leander Paes had to concede his doubles quarterfinal because of partner Marcel Granollers’s illness.
The results: Second round: 3-Benoit Paire (Fra) bt Lukas Rosol (Cze) 7-5, 7-5; Thomas Fabbiano (Ita) bt 6-Gilles Muller (Lux) 6-4, 7-5; Ramkumar Ramanathan (Ind) bt Alexander Kudryavtsev (Rus) 3-6, 6-4, 6-4; Aljaz Bedene (GBr) bt Luca Vanni (Ita) 5-7, 6-3, 6-4.
Doubles: Quarterfinals: Austin Krajicek (USA) & Benoit Paire (Fra) w/o 2-Marcel Granollers (Esp) & Leander Paes (Ind).
