The choice of the ATP Chennai Open Challenger organisers to award one of many three predominant draw wildcards to a overseas participant hasn’t gone down properly with some folks in Indian tennis, although it occurs to be tennis legend Bjorn Borg’s son.
The Tamil Nadu Tennis Affiliation handed out wildcards to Indians Prajnesh Gunneswaran (world rank 306) and Ramkumar Ramanathan (412) in addition to 515th-ranked Leo Borg, the 19-year-old Swede whose father, a 11-time Grand Slam winner, has accompanied him to Chennai. It meant the likes of Mukund Sasikumar, the India No 2 in singles (312) who’s from the town and Sumit Nagal (509) must play the qualifiers on Sunday to make the minimize.
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Vishal Uppal, the previous Davis Cupper who’s captain of the Billie Jean King Cup group, questioned whether or not Mukund and Nagal weren’t vital sufficient to groom. “At a time when Indian Tennis Gamers want probably the most help & alternatives, why give a Most important Draw Wild Card to a foreigner (simply because he has a well-known final identify) within the ATP Challenger in Chennai?” Uppal tweeted.
One other former Davis Cup participant, who didn’t want to be named, stated the uncommon alternative of getting three back-to-back Challengers in India—Chennai will likely be adopted by Bengaluru and Pune—served an excellent alternative to help the native professionals at a time when India’s singles assets seems scarce. “We are able to maintain complaining about issues that aren’t preferrred, like awarding wildcards, or simply get on with the job,” he stated.
Handing out wildcards, the organisers’ prerogative, is commonly a subjective problem even on the ATP Tour. Nevertheless, Indian singles professionals seldom benefit from the luxurious of a direct entry into tournaments exterior the nation (the newest exception being Nagal’s Australian Open wildcard in 2021).
For Indian gamers who don’t get to play sufficient tournaments at dwelling it may be a fillip. Prefer it did to Karman Kaur Thandi, who shocked eighth seed Chloe Paquet within the first spherical of the WTA 250 Chennai Open final yr as a wildcard to zoom up the rankings.
It stays to be seen whether or not the organisers of the Bengaluru and Pune Challengers additionally determine to offer a wildcard to Leo, who is because of play all the Indian leg.