Rai of hope for NZ tennis

New Plymouth’s Ajeet Rai says he’ll feel more prepared for this year’s ASB Classic than he did in 2018.

The 19-year-old has been given a wildcard for the qualifying tournament and will play his first match on Saturday.

He played Taro Daniel from Japan in qualifying last year and lost 6-1 6-2. At the time Daniel was ranked 98 in the world and is now at 77.

That was always going to be an extremely tough match, but Rai went on to have a big first year on the circuit, getting his ranking up from nothing to 694, playing on the Futures circuit.

This year he hopes to make the jump up to the higher level Challenger tournaments, but before that he gets another chance to mix it with some of the the world’s best in Auckland. ‘‘I’m feeling really good about it,’’ Rai said. ‘‘I know how it went down last year and I got the hang of it, so now I know what I can change and my coaches and myself can sort out what I need to do differently.

‘‘I think I’ve grown up a lot in the last year, that was a really big wake up call for me. When you come from New Zealand and you think you’re doing so well even internationally in the juniors.

‘‘But when you play against one of the top pros, it’s a lot different.

‘‘I think it’s going to be a lot different this time. I’m not focusing on the result much, but how I perform and what I control.

‘‘I know that I’m going to try to perform well this year.’’

While Rai was ranked inside the top 700 at Christmas, that disappeared the following week and Rubin Statham is now the only New Zealand men’s player with an ATP ranking, at 373.

That’s because the sport’s governing bodies have changed the system, so that there are two tiers of ranking, the ATP level and the new Transition Tour level.