Ramkumar Ramanathan continued his golden run at the Hall of Fame Open in Newport, beating American Tim Smyczek in straight sets 6-4, 7-5 on Saturday. With this win, he set up the first final for an Indian player at an ATP World Tour event in seven years.
World no. 161 Ramkumar had a 2-3 win-loss record in singles matches on the tour for the calendar year going into the grass at Newport, before embarking on a series of big scalps that have included American Denis Kudla and Canadian Vasek Pospisil over the past week. The last Indian to have made ATP Tour finals was Somdev Devvarman, who lost to Marin Cilic at the 2009 Chennai Open and was beaten in an ATP Tour final in 2011 in Johannesburg by 2018 Wimbledon runner-up Kevin Anderson.
Ramkumar made the best possible start to the match by breaking Smyczek's service in the very first game of the match, enforcing a 0-40 deficit that the latter was able to bring down to 30-40 before being broken. Ramkumar held service to claim the opening set 6-4, serving two aces and winning 81 percent of points on his first serve, offering no break points to his opponent.
Ramkumar was the first to break Smyczek again at 1-1 in the second set -- a hard-fought game that saw deuce brought up five times -- but then got broken himself for the first time in the match. Not long after, Smyczek would break him a second time to go 4-2 up, but Ramkumar broke back immediately to bring the set back on serve. A break at 5-5 for Ramkumar meant he had to serve out for a place in the final, and he duly did so to win in one hour, 32 minutes.
Ramkumar will now face third seed Steve Johnson of U.S. in Sunday's final. Should Ramkumar win, he will become the first Indian to have won an ATP World Tour title since Leander Paes, who won the Hall of Fame Open in 1998 at the same venue. In fact, Newport appears to be lucky for Indian competitors once every decade -- Prakash Amritraj made his only career singles final at the same tournament in 2008.