Work on serve, net play: Yuki’s 2018 resolve
Bernard Tomic defeated India’s Yuki Bhambri in the semifinals of the 2008 Australian Open. Yuki won his only Junior Slam title the next year beating Greek Alexandros-Ferdinandos Geoegoudas in Australian Open.
Tomic, who stepped into the senior circuit soon after, went on to achieve a highest ATP tour ranking of 17 in January 2016. Bhambri achieved his highestever ranking of 88 in November 2015. Their career graphs took a dive in similar fashion and today they are currently ranked out of thr top 100 — Tomic is ranked 141, Bhambri is 118.
While Tomic lost out due to mental issues and was in the news for wrong reasons, Bhambri succumbed to a tennis elbow injury and was out of action from March to September and his rankings dropped below 500.
After that, Bhambri has fought his way back and is on the verge of making it back into the top 100.
“I was very happy the way the entire 2017 went. I worked on small things but playing the entire season without any injury was the main thing,” Yuki told Hindustan Times on the sidelines of the Tata Open Maharashtra.
In July 2017, Bhambri scalped his first top player — Gael Monfils of France who was ranked 22 then — as he reached the quarterfinals at Citi Open in Washington. Towards the end of the year he won his second Pune Challenger title by beating Ramkumar Ramanathan. This was his sixth Challenger title.
Now that he has climbed his way back up, Bhambri wants to continue the progress and make it back where he was in 2015.
“I hope to play the entire 2018 season, play as many matches as possible on ATP Tour, work on my game, improve on my service and net play and hopefully win some titles,” said Bhambri.
Just like in 2017, the 25-yearold from Delhi who is now settled in Bradenton, Florida, is hoping to do well in the Australian Open.
He has set himself another target too — doubles. He was 134 in doubles in 2014 and is 376 now. “I want to play doubles more on ATP tour along with singles. Singles will remain my priority.”
He started putting his resolve into practice here and reached the semi-finals partnering Divij Sharan, with whom he reached the final of the Tashkent Challenger in October 2017.