CHENNAI: Pune Open’s new slot in the calendar has meant they have not been able to attract the calibre of players they would like. The main draw list — put out by the organisers on Tuesday — has zero players inside the top 20 and just one inside the top 65.
France’s Benoit Paire — World No 24 — is the top seed for the tournament as it stands.
In fact, the cut off (at 117) makes this one of the worst draws in the history of an Indian ATP World Tour event in terms of current rankings.
While tournament director Prashant Sutar acknowledged that the shift in the calendar led to a somewhat diluted field, he is of the opinion that the level of play will still be at a very high level.
“During our discussions with some of the top players that we wanted to bring, there was an indication that the Europeans will return to Europe after the Australian Open,” he told this daily.
“But, saying that, this is a very special edition when we are celebrating 25 years of ATP Tour in India. The players who will come to Pune have produced some outstanding results recently and we are confident that the tournament will be of a high level,” he added.
So why has the level so suddenly dropped after attracting the likes of Kevin Anderson, Marin Cilic, Roberto Bautista Agut and Stan Wawrinka over the last four years? While a lack of financial resources has always existed, the organisers had bridged that gap as they had packaged the tournament as an attractive stopover before the Australian Open.
With the tournament shifting from the first week of January to the first week of February (it’s slated for February 3-9 in 2020), that option is no longer on the table for a variety of reasons. Most of the top players prefer to skip the World Tour events in the week immediately after a Major so as to rest and recuperate.
The February 3-9 date has also created an additional problem — most of the players, including ones who have played in India before (Stan Wawrinka, Gilles Simon, Andrey Rublev and Aljaz Bedene to name a few) — have preferred to play the 250 event in Montpellier, which has a cut off of 62.
This is because it’s easy to go from Montpellier to Rotterdam for the ATP 500 event that starts from February 10. A chance for Indians to shine However, this has inadvertently opened up an avenue for Indians to do well in Pune, a sentiment that was echoed by Davis Cup coach Zeeshan Ali.
“Yes, this is perhaps a good opportunity for all the Indians to go deep in the tournament,” he said.
While there are no Indians in the main draw, it’s expected that Prajnesh Gunneswaran, Sumit Nagal and Ramkumar Ramanathan will either be given wild cards or try and make their way from the qualifiers.
“Indian men’s singles has a good depth and they are all capable of producing good runs... the other thing is they are in good form currently so it will be interesting to see how they progress.”
Players (main draw; cut off 117):
Benoit Paire (World No 24), Ricardas Berankis (66), Philipp Kohlschreiber (79), Stefano Travaglia (84), Soonwoo Kwon (88), Cedrik-Marcel Stebe (95*), Ivo Karlovic (95), Salvatore Caruso (96), Egor Gerasimov (98), James Duckworth (100), Kamil Majchrzak (101), Yuichi Sugita (103), Jiri Vesely (105), Taro Daniel (110), Evgeny Donskoy (112), Thomas Fabbiano (114), Paolo Lorenzi (115) Antoine Hoang (116), Peter Gojowczyk (117). * protected ranking
Draw Details
Main draw 19
Special exempts2
Wildcard 3
Qualifiers 4