Young Indian tennis player Ramkumar Ramanathan on Monday achieved his career-best rank of 184 after jumping up 38 places in the ATP singles ranking chart following his inspiring show at the Antalya Open, where he stunned world number eighth Dominic Thiem.
Ramkumar who came as a qualifier in the tournament, reached the Quarters where he lost to veteran Marcos Baghdatis.
The Chennai lad earned 57 points for his effort and as a result jumped 38 places in the ladder to be the highest-ranked Indian in the singles now.
He is followed by Yuki Bhambri (222), Prajnesh Gunneswaran (259), N Sriram Balaji (291) and Sumit Nagal (342), who jumped 27 places.
In the doubles, Rohan Bopanna was highest-ranked Indian at number 21, followed by Purav Raja (57), Divij Sharan (57), Leander Paes (62) and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan (90).
In the WTA rankings, Sania Mirza remained at number seven in the doubles and Ankita Raina was highest-ranked singles player at number 274. Karman Kaur Thandi was next best at 413.
After his shock win over World No. 8 Dominic Thiem, the No. 222-ranked Indian pushed veteran Marcos Baghdatis to the edge in the quarterfinals of the Antalya Open on Thursday. Ramkumar said in an interview, "Against Baghdatis, I started well and fought till the end. It was quite humid, so I had to conserve my energy for the big points. Of course I had a chance against him and felt bad losing out, but he's a great player and his experience really made the difference."
Interestingly, what helped Ramkumar was watching Roger Federer's matches against Thiem the night before his match. "Federer has always been an idol," he says. "I saw a couple of matches of Thiem and Federer before I played Thiem and it gave me a few ideas on how to play him. I tried some of them on court and got a few points. I went in on his backhand after his serve and it worked out pretty well."
Ramkumar had a target of reaching "Top 150" & with the way he is playing the things can go in favour of him in the upcoming tournaments.