By IANS,
New Delhi : Junior Australian Open champion Yuki Bhambri is all keyed up to play in the US Open, and in the tune-up to the last Grand Slam of the year will be appearing in the $10,000 International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournament that begins here Monday.
Yuki, seeded second in the second of the three back-to-back ITF tournaments, will add strength to the Indian challenge, led by last week’s finalist Vishnu Vardhan, who has got the top billing this week as well. South Korean Young-Jun Kim, who beat Vardhan to win the title in the first week, has been seeded third.
Yuki, who in January became the first Indian to win a junior Australian Open, did not play in the next two Slams — the junior Wimbledon and French Open.
“I wanted to get some match practice before leaving for the US Open, so I decided to play this week here,” Yuki, who will be heading for the Flushing Meadows next week Saturday, told IANS.
The Delhi boy, who held a 17-match winning streak at the DLTA stadium here before bowing out in the ITF quarter-final in July, says he is once again up for the challenge.
“Last time I was feeling exhausted after playing a lot of tournaments. I had a good break after that. I went to Florida to train and then played in the Challenger qualifiers in Kazakhstan, where I lost in the second round,” said Yuki who returned home last week.
“It is a totally a different level of at the Challengers. It’s tougher than the ITF tournaments. Even though I was seeded in the qualifiers, I lost to a lower-ranked player.”
Yuki says the field in the ongoing ITF tournaments is the toughest he has seen in India this year.
“Even though it’s only a $10,000 event, I think it is the toughest futures field we have had at the Futures level in India. There are quite a few Britons, Koreans, Americans in the draw. I don’t think I will run into many Indian players this time. It is always tough to play foreign players even if its is your home city.”
“But I have done well here and I think I would be doing fine,” he said.