Pune, Jan 5 (PTI) Former Davis Cup captain Anand Amritraj is baffled that India’s best singles players are not able to win close matches on the ATP World Tour despite having a decent game to back them, saying it’s “worrisome”.

Amritraj said that at the World Tour level, more than the ground strokes it’s the ability to soak in pressure and make the right calls in the crunch situation that dictates the outcome of the matches and the Indian players need to work on that.

Sasikumar Mukund, country’s highest-ranked singles player, Ramkumar Ramanathan and Sumit Nagal ran the higher-ranked players close at the Tata Open Maharashtra but eventually fell short and made first round exits.

All of them took the match to a stage from where either player could have won but could not win points when it mattered.

Mukund, ranked 340, lost 4-6 5-7 to Flavio Cobolli (ranked 171) while Ramkumar (ranked 435) lost to world number 62 Pedro Martinez despite taking a one-set lead (6-3 5-7 3-6).

Nagal, whose ranking has plummeted to 503 after injury-forced break, stretched world number 54 Flip Krajinovic to a three-setter but lost the match when he tried to improvise in the decider in a tight situation.

“I was very impressed with Sumit Nagal, I thought he played great; just a couple of bad choices of shots in the final set at 4-4, and that cost him the match,” Amritraj, who captained the Indian Davis Cup team between 2013 and 2018, told

Source: PTI News