Sumit Nagal leads the Indian challenge at the Marrakech Open ATP 250 event starting next week. He will be joined by Yuki Bhambri with his new doubles partner, Albano Olivetti.
Sumit Nagal has had a good start to the year qualifying for the Australian Open main draw and beating the 31st-seed Alexander Bublik.
He had a good outing in the Indian Challenger season winning the Chennai Open Challenger while making the semi-finals at Bangalore Open Challenger.
By entering the Indian Wells main draw as a lucky loser, he became the first Indian since Prajnesh Gunneswaran in 2019 to play in the main draw of an ATP 1000 event.
On the back of these good results, he has entered the top 100 & is at a career-high ranking of 97. He will be looking to improve his ranking further on his favorite surface in the European clay court season starting at the ATP 250 event in Marrakech.
The deadline for the Olympic Qualification is June 10th with the top 56 ranked singles players qualifying. This can extend a bit as there is a limit of 4 players per country with many countries like the USA, France, and Germany having more than 4 players in the top 56.
He will have some tough opponents in the Marrakech draw including the likes of Stan Wawrinka, Laslo Djere, Lorenzo Sonego, Roberto Carballes Baena, and Daniel Evans among others.
Yuki with a New Partner
Yuki Bhambri has a new partner in the big-serving Frenchman Albano Olivetti. It would be interesting to see how the new pairing fares in the Men’s Doubles draw that also includes his former partner Robin Haase who is the top-seeded pair along with Andreas Mies.
With Rohan Bopanna almost confirmed to qualify for the Paris Olympics by virtue of his top 10 ranking, Yuki would ideally like to showcase his Clay court abilities to join Bopanna in Paris. This tournament could be a good opportunity for Yuki to build a good run in the Clay court.
Written By Nithish Raghunandanan
