India's Yuki Bhambri, the world's top-ranked junior and the reigning Australian Open Junior champion has received a main draw wild card into the Sony Ericsson Open, which begins on March 25. That news, first reported by The Hindu, was confirmed by IMG Vice President Olivier Van Lindonk. The 16-year-old had earned a qualifying wild card by virtue of his victory at the Orange Bowl, on the site of the Sony Ericsson, but IMG, who owns the tournament, has decided to upgrade him. He'll join Marcos Baghdatis and Lleyton Hewitt, who have already been announced as wild card recipients.
Bhambri recently came in for some criticism for choosing to play in this week's Pro Circuit event in Texas rather than serve as a practice partner in India's Davis Cup tie with Chinese Taipei this weekend, according to this story from DNA. (University of Virginia's Sanam Singh, who is mentioned here as a part of the Davis Cup team, is not participating). Bhambri, using a junior exemption gained by finishing in the Top 10 of the ITF Juniors last year, lost in the first round of the Futures event to Lester Cook 6-4, 6-2. He also lost, in three sets, to Singh in the first round of qualifying for the ATP's Chennai Open back in January. IMG needs to use some caution in handing out a wild card to such a big tournament--it worked fine with Michelle Larcher de Brito, who last year used hers to win two Sony Ericsson matches before losing to Shahar Peer, but Bhambri is well behind her in terms of physical maturity. No one wants to see the Donald Young scenario repeated with another precocious and talented teen who is being viewed as the best hope to improve his country's tennis fortunes.
I recently spoke with Chris Woodruff, the associate head coach at the University of Tennessee (this is a teaser for my Tennis Recruiting Network article next week) and he made it very clear to me the danger of playing at the wrong level--and this was as an NCAA champion who felt in over his head. The occasional wild card is generally not harmful, but as Woodruff said, word gets around that you haven't earned your way in and there's not much sympathy from professionals for that circumstance.
Although there are plenty of tennis blogs out there (see my links for some of my favorites), a new one by my Tennis Recruiting Network colleague Marc Lucero is definitely worth a read. He has posted only once, but his account of the Stanford and USC men's match last week will be much appreciated by those of us who can't get enough college tennis match reports.
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