YUKI BHAMBRI AND RAMKUMAR RAMANATHAN - GIANT KILLERS OF INDIAN TENNIS

Ramkumar Ramanathan and Yuki Bhambri have made it a habit of constantly taming top ranked players.

New talents keep emerging in the world of sports but very few go on to fulfill their full potential. Yuki Bhambri and Ramkumar Ramanathan are such talents in Indian tennis, who haven't quite raised their bars, after occasional stints of record breaking performances. Every now and then, they have come up with stellar campaigns that gives us a glimpse of what they are actually capable of and then gone through a long nascent stage. The last month and a half have been somewhat successful for Indian tennis in the international circuit, through some surprising wins that these two lads have been able to produce. They have constantly hit the breaking news headline of sports articles about Indian sports, made it to sports illustrated cover stories. Yuki and Ramanathan have made it to the top news of sports current events consistently and have been a name in world news sports, due to their giant killing stints.

Yuki Bhambri and Ramkumar Ramanathan

Ramkumar Ramanathan

It all began end June, with Ramkumar Ramanathan humbling world number eight and top seed Dominic Thiem in a stunning straight-set 6-3, 6-2 victory in Antalya Open. Thiem couldn't survive his onslaught of big serves. He thus recorded the biggest win of his singles career and this was his first-ever victory over a top-10 player in the ATP rankings. He also defeated earlier in this tournament, much higher ranked Rogerio Dutra Silva of Brazil in the R16, for his first top-100 win of the year. Ramkumar who had qualified for that ATP250 event, progressed to quarterfinals, where he fought gallantly but lost to veteran Marcos Baghdatis, in a grueling three-setter. Starting the tournament, at ranked 222 in the World, he earned 57 points for his effort and as a result leapfrogged 38 places in the ladder to be the highest-ranked Indian in the singles now. Somdev Devvarman was the last Indian to beat a top 10 player in singles when he beat Juan Martin del Potro in the first round of the 2014 Dubai Tennis Championships, an ATP 500 tournament. However, Del Potro had withdrawn due to a wrist injury after losing the first set tiebreak in that match.

Yuki Bhambri 

Twitterattis reacted Ramanathan's stint to be an one day affair and deemed it to be an exception scene in Indian tennis, but they have been proved wrong, as Yuki Bhambri has repeated a similar performance in last week's ATP Citi Open. He had the biggest win of his career, as he went past sixth seed and defending champion World No. 22 Gael Monfils of France with a 6-3, 4-6, 7-5 victory in the second round of the Citi Open ATP tennis tournament to breeze into the pre-quarterfinals. He had previously defeated Italy’s Fabio Fognini, then ranked 16, at the 2014 Chennai Open but that was via retirement. Yuki then eked out a 6-7(5), 6-3, 6-1 win over Argentine Pella, who is ranked exactly 100 places above the Indian. So, it is for the first time that Bhambri has won three matches in the main draw of an ATP World Tour event and only the second appearance in the singles quarterfinals of an ATP World Tour event, as he had reached the Chennai Open last-eight in 2014. In Quaterfinals, he fought valiantly before a three-set defeat against 15th seed South African Kevin Anderson. The points he gained thus, should help him get close to 150, when the new rankings are released.







Yuki has been an exceptional talent right from the start of his career. He is a former junior world no. 1 and winner of the 2009 Australian Open Junior Championship. He is the first Indian to win the junior Australian Open title and fourth Indian in history to capture a junior singles title at a Grand Slam championship. Whereas, Ramanathan is a budding talent and he is just 22, so age is by his side. If these talents can be well nurtured, its not long when the dream of making big in the singles arena will turn a reality. The reins of the Indian dream of a Singles Grand slam champion or an Olympic Medal in Singles is just well rested in the firm hands of these two sensational giant killers in Indian tennis.