Sumit Nagal wins India’s first Olympic singles match in 25 years

The win on Saturday came the hard way. The match was riddled with errors, as Nagal was guilty of conceding 56 unforced errors to Istomin’s 51 – they scored 11 and 12 winners respectively.

Eventually, it took Sumit Nagal a second attempt to serve out the match. And when he did eventually beat Uzbekistan’s Denis Istomin 6-4, 6-7(6), 6-4, he became the first Indian since 1996 to win a singles match at the Olympics.

It took him two hours and 34 minutes to pull off the win. But that’s just a blink of the eye when compared to the 25-year wait the country has had to endure to get moving at the Olympics in singles. To put that wait into perspective, Nagal, 23, wasn’t even born when Leander Paes went on to win bronze at the 1996 Games in Atlanta.

Getting to the Tokyo Olympics needed a stroke of luck though, as Nagal, ranked 144 on the cut-off date (June 14), secured a berth only after a series of withdrawals. But when the current World No 160 stepped onto court 10 at the Ariake Tennis Centre to play an opponent who was once 33rd in the world, the youngster wasn’t quite out of place. After all, he has become the man for the big stages.

Going back to the US Open in 2019, Nagal came through the qualification round to set up his first ever Grand Slam main draw match against the great Roger Federer. The clash was expected to have been a rout for the Swiss, but the youngster rallied well and took the first set. He eventually lost in four, but left the 20-time Grand Slam champion impressed.

“He actually does a really good job, especially on the inside-out, how he gets around. That was impressive,” Federer said of the Jhajjar-lad at the time.

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A year later at the US Open, he beat Denis Kudla to become the first player since Somdev Devvarman at the US Open in 2013, to win a Grand Slam main draw match. In the second round he gave a decent showing against Dominic Thiem, who went on to win the tournament.

Now, he’s become only the third Indian after Zeeshan Ali (Seoul 1988) and Paes to win an Olympic singles match.

Funnily enough, for a player who swears by clay courts, it is on hard surfaces where his best performances have come.

The win on Saturday came the hard way. The match was riddled with errors, as Nagal was guilty of conceding 56 unforced errors to Istomin’s 51 – they scored 11 and 12 winners respectively.

Nagal still won the points that counted and it took him to the point where he was serving for the match at 5-4 in the second set. The 34-year-old Istomin’s experience came to the fore and he managed to break back serve, eventually winning the tiebreaker 8-6.

But the Uzbek has been struggling for form and fitness and is far from being the player that upset Novak Djokovic at the 2017 Australian Open.

Nagal has so far thrived on the big stages, and will look to continue in the same vein in the second round, where a steep challenge in World No 2 Daniil Medvedev awaits.

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