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Sunil Kumar breaks into top 100 jr rankings

Shailesh Soni

Leading Indian junior Sunil Kumar has broken into the top 100 in International Tennis Federation junior rankings. Earlier this week, the 17-year-old Chandigarh youngster moved up to No. 92 following fine performances in the European circuit.

Sunil finished runner-up at the Grade-3 event in Hungary two weeks back picking up 45 points to take his total to 180 points. He, however, could not continue his good run at the Grade-2 ITF event at Frankfurt, Germany, last week. This time he was unseeded, and went down in the first round to the 70th ranked and 5th seeded Raven Klaasen of South Africa, 6-4, 3-6, 6-7(5) in a close match.

In doubles, Sunil and Darko Aljei of Ghana lost in the first round to Markus Dickhardt and Tim Krabs of Germany, 0-6, 3-6.

Sunil does have another year in the juniors after this and so he is well on course to go up higher in the rankings the next year.

The Frankfurt event completed his five-week European tour, sponsored by the ITF, during which he raised his points total from 120 to 180 and his ranking from near 135 to 92.

Currently Sunil is the fifth highest ranked Asian junior player, behind 17-year-old Yen-Hsun Lu -- ranked 13, and 15-year-old Yeu-Tzuo Wang -- ranked 27, both of Taiwan; 18-year-old Hiroko Kondo -- ranked 28 -- of Japan, and 18-year-old Sonchat Ratiwatana -- ranked 85 of Thailand.

He will now be going to UK to play a couple of grass events. This week he will be playing at the Grade-2 event at East Mosley, Surrey. Next week he will be at Roehampton Grade-1 event. But with his current ranking he not get a direct entry into the Wimbledon Juniors which follows the week after.