Twenty-seven-year-old Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan's name has been hitting the headlines for the right reasons of late. Jeevan has bagged two consecutive doubles titles at the Asian Challenger events held in the last few weeks. With these exploits, he is now ranked at a career high rank of no.129 in the world doubles rankings.
Initially successful in both singles and doubles at the Futures level tournaments, the southpaw has now chosen to direct his energy at doing well in the doubles circuit, which he acknowledged recently.
He entered the top 200 of ATP doubles rankings in mid-2015, but it went largely unnoticed. After a few months of being ranked there and peaking at no.164, he once again slipped out of the top 200, to be ranked at no.211 in the beginning of 2016.
2016 has been a fruitful year so far
This year, his first tournament was the Aircel Chennai Open, in his hometown, where he played singles in the qualifiers and doubles as a wildcard entrant. Though he failed in the very first round of singles, he went on to reach the semifinals in doubles, along with Somdev Devvarman.
It was his first ever appearance at the semifinal stage of an ATP Tour event. His biggest doubles result till then had been the Challenger title that he and Devvarman had won at the Kolkata Challenger in 2015 (they had received a walkover in the finals against James Duckworth and Luke Saville of Australia).
With progress in doubles evident, Jeevan is now more focused on improving his ranking in doubles. In fact, his singles results have petered down this year, with just one main draw appearance which came at the New Delhi Challenger. He tried qualifying for many of the Challenger events that he played this year, but could not make it to the main draw of most of them.
Following the Chennai Open result, he has entirely focused on playing in the ATP Challenger tour. After a couple of decent results, he made it to the finals of the Shenzhen Challenger in tandem with big serving compatriot Saketh Myneni. Luke Saville and Jordan Thompson got the better of the Indian duo in that tightly fought match which culminated in a match tie-break with the score of 12-10 in favour of the Australians.
Two consecutive titles
He once again united with Saketh at the Nanjing Challenger, played on clay, where the two went on to win the title. The ease with which the duo won their matches was surprising given that they had just started playing together. En route to the title they dropped no set and lost no more than a maximum of four games in a set.
After a week's break, he once again got back to court at the Karshi Challenger. While he was initially scheduled to continue playing with Saketh for a few more tournaments, it didn’t materialize due to latter's shoulder injury (he is expected to be back in time for the French Open qualifiers, scheduled to start next week).
His partner for the tournament was Spaniard Enrique Lopez-Perez, with whom he had earlier won two Futures titles. Once again, Jeevan went on to win the title with convincing wins over some of the best teams at the Challengers level, including a final match that lasted for under an hour.
With two successive titles coming with different partners and on different surfaces, Jeevan has proven his mettle as a successful doubles player.
He continues his stint in Uzbekistan this week, where he is scheduled to play the Samarkand Challenger in partnership with Italian Riccardo Ghedin. They are seeded third and open against Steven Diez of Canada and Nicolas Barrientos of Colombia.
Now ranked at no.129, Jeevan is, at the age of 27, just at the beginning of his doubles career. With the potential to excel in doubles, his progress in the forthcoming weeks could be worth watching.
Career statistics
Singles | Doubles | |
|---|---|---|
Career high-ranking | 293 (25/08/2014) | 129 (09/05/2016) |
Current Ranking | 550 | 129 |
Futures titles till date | 7 | 20 |
Challengers titles till date | - | 3 |
