Emotional Nagal breaks into top 100 with Chennai triumph

On February 12, 2023, Sumit Nagal played the first qualifying round of the ATP Chennai Open Challenger as a player ranked 506 in the world.

- Rutvick Mehta

On February 12, 2024, Nagal will become a player ranked 98 in the world as champion of the ATP Chennai Open Challenger.

And as the Indian wiped away tears after winning the final on Sunday, it showed what the latest landmark in this terrific turnaround tale, less than a month after qualifying for the 2024 Australian Open and beating 27th seed Alexander Bublik in the first round, meant for him.

Nagal will break into the top 100 of ATP's singles rankings for the first time in his career, a place he earned after beating top seed Luca Nardi of Italy 6-1, 6-4 for the title in Chennai that will see him jump from 121 to 98 in the updated rankings on Monday.

A top-100 spot in singles is a key milestone for any professional tennis player, one where only 10 Indian men have ever gone since the ATP rankings were introduced in 1973. The list includes some of the finest from the country (Vijay Amritraj, Ramesh Krishnan, Leander Paes, Somdev Devvarman, etc) and hasn't seen an entrant in five years since Prajnesh Gunneswaran in 2019.