Somdev Devvarman - last Indian standing in Chennai Open

04 January, 2013

The ongoing Chennai Open, which started on 31 December 2012 has not turned out to be a good tournament for India with top Indian players in the fray such as Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Rohan Bopanna - all having seen the exit door from the doubles competition.

SOMDEV DEVVARMAN is the lone Indian survivor for the doubles competition. It looks worse in the singles arena with all the Indian participants such as Prakash Amritraj, Somdev Devvarman and Yuki Bhambri having been already lost in the competition.

One of the biggest hopes in the doubles competition was the pairing of Mahesh Bhupathi and Daniel Nestor who lost in the quarter-finals of the competition. It was even more embarrassing with one of India's best doubles players, Leander Paes, losing in the first round. Paes had been paired with Roger Vasselin. The same fate was met by the Indian pair of Sanam Singh and Vishnu Vardhan, who were considered to be the rising stars of Indian tennis.

The biggest hope for India in the singles competition was Somdev who won his first round match but faltered in the quarter finals against one of the favourites for the competition, Tomas Berdych. Hence, all hope of an Indian player progressing in the singles came to an end, as other players such as Amritraj and Bhambri had already lost in the competition in the first round itself.

In the doubles category, the pairing of Raven Klaasen and Nicholas Monroe, which defeated Bhupathi and Nestor, are the front runners for the title, along with the pairing of Stanislas Wawrinka and Benoit Paire. But Indian tennis fans would bank on Somdev and his partner, Sergiy Stakhovsky from Ukraine to pose a serious challenge in the competition, at the least, who are set to play their quarter-finals match today.

Whereas in the singles, the competition is going to be an interesting one with top ATP players such as Tomas Berdych, Stanislas Wawrinka, Janko Tipsarevic and Marin Cilic eying their first ATP title in 2013. There is cut-throat competition in the singles.

The tournament, which started in 1996 has never seen an Indian win the singles competition. Somdev came closest to a title win in 2009, but lost the finals against Marin Cilic. The competition has always attracted some of the top players from the ATP circuit, as the past winners suggest. Thomas Enqvist, Patrick Rafter, Carlos Moya, Ivan Ljubicic, Marin Cilic, and Stanislas Wawrinka are some of the title holders. Cilic and Moya have won the title twice each.