India’s rising star, Manas Dhamne, aged 13, wins the U16 Jugend Cup at Stuttgart

India’s rising star, Manas Dhamne, aged 13, wins the U16 Jugend Cup at Stuttgart

Manas Dhamne

In the last 2 decades, Indian tennis hasn’t produced a world class singles player since Leander Paes. Many top doubles player have won big at the top level for India, but when it comes to Singles competition, there is a huge void. Somdev Devvarman was probably the last Singles player who had an outside chance to stay in the top 100 consistently.

But even Somdev wasn’t able to compete at the highest level. Since them many players including Yuki Bhambri have shown a lot of promise but the delivery hasn’t been as expected. As of now, none of the Indian Men’s Singles player are in the Top 150 in the world. Prajnesh Gunneswaran is the highest ranked Indian player at 158 in the ATP Rankings followed by Sumit Nagal and Ramkumar Ramanathan.

Manas Dhamne
Manas Dhamne

But a young 13-year old boy was shown hope for Indian tennis. Manas Dhamne has proved time and again that a lot could be expected from the young prodigy in the future. Latest, Manas beat 173rd ranked(European Junior Tennis Rankings) Vincent Vohl in the final of the U16 Jugend Cup at Stuttgart. The Indian beat Kohl in straight sets 6-2,6-1 to lift the title.

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Manas, who hails from Pune has been winning on the international stage since the last 3 years. He came to everyone’s attention when he won the Junior Grand Slam in US in 2019. He was just 11 then and even won big in the U12s before. Manas’ journey through the juniors has been very similar to that of Yuki Bhambhri. He would want to carry the same form in his remaining junior years and into the seniors too.

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