The Indian Sojourn in the French Open Qualifying ended today at the Roland Garros with the Indian Shikha Uberoi losing in straight sets 7-6 (4) 6-3 of the first Qualifying match. Earlier Harsh Mankad too had lost in two straight sets in his Q1 Match .
The 22 yr Old Shikha , an Indian Fed Cup member, who is ranked 137th in the world was pitted against the talented 18 yr old from Slovakia , Jarmila Galdosova. Though Uberoi was seeded 21st in the qualifiers and the ranking suggested an easy win , the recent form especially on clay favoured the Slovakian with Gajdosova winning a $ 25k challenger in Italy and reaching the QF of $ 50K Saint Gardens while Shikha losing both her matches on the clay this season so far in straight sets coming into the French Open Qualifying. The latter forecast proved to be right in the end.
The match started with Shikha serving. Soon it became 2-1 with the games going on serve.Then Shikha took the crucial break of serve as Gajdosova made a couple of unforced errors and struggled to get the first serves in play, then Shikha held on to make it a 4-1 lead. Shikha's game then started to break apart as her her second
serves were easily picked off by Gajdosova and also the Slovakian cut down on her errors which forced Shikha to go for a bit more on her ground strokes which resulted in more unforced errors from Shikha and soon the Slovakian led 6-5 and serving for the set. Gajdosova wilted a bit under pressure by making a double fault and couple of winners from Shikha brought it to a tie breaker. Shikha lost the first point on her serve which proved to be very costly in the end as the remaining points were won on serve leading to the Slovakian winning the tie breaker 7-4.The second set started with Shikha making a semblance of a comeback as she took a 2-1 lead with a break up but then normal service resumed as Shikha's Unforced errors started to increase while Gajdosova continued to pick off Shikha's second serves and start to make more winners as she soon broke back to make it 4-3. Then she broke Shikha's serve to seal the fate of the match and won it 7-6 (4) 6-3 to create an upset though the match was always expected to be a closely fought one taking their recent form into account.
For one whose serve is highly regarded, Shikha Uberoi really struggled with her serve today. The most glaring difference between the two players was that while Jarmila won 63 % of points on her second serve, on the other hand
Shikha only won 31 % of points on her second serve . Jarmila constantly made oppurtunities for herself on Shikha's serve and had as many as 9 break points compared to only 3 from Shikha. Also Shikha failed to use of the breaks she got like when she led 4-1 in 1st set and 2-1 with a breakup in the second while Jarmila on the other hand played well under pressure which made the difference. This ends the short and dissappointing stinct for Shikha on clay and now onto the grass courts for her.It has been a dissappointing clay season for the Indians so far with none of the Indians making any real impression. The AITA needs to start giving more importances to clay court events in India as it plays a vital role in developing many facets of the game of a player. It improves the baseline game of the players, improves the fitness and more importantly it teaches the importance of patience and the grinding out of points which the Indian players lack. Clay Courts have long been overlooked in India apart from an odd $ 10K event and so its about time it got its due.
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