Pune: Sumit Nagal could have been forgiven if, deep inside, he had felt he didn’t want to play the first reverse singles rubber against Soonwoo Kwon.Having gone through a brutal three-hour, five-minute singles match on Friday evening, the India No. 1 had little time to fully recover for Saturday’s key clash.As it turned out, the 29-year-old went down 1-6, 2-6 in an hour and 18 minutes as Kwon powered South Korea to a 3-1 win over India in the Davis Cup Qualifier second-round tie in Seoul on Saturday (Sep 19, 2026).Korea became the first Asian nation, under the latest format of the men’s team tennis competition, to reach the World Group Final 8, to be played in Bologna, Italy, in November.India return to Qualifier Round 1 in 2027.Down 0-2 after losing both opening singles, captain Rohit Rajpal changed the doubles combination, bringing in Dhakshineswar Suresh in place of the originally nominated Niki Poonacha to partner Sriram Balaji.The Indians won the doubles rubber first thing on Saturday morning, a 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 win over Uisung Park and JiSung Nam, but the key decision the captain did not make was replacing Nagal with the 18-year-old Manas Dhamne.The rubber, and effectively the tie, was sealed within the first half-hour as Nagal was broken three times in the opening set, committing a double fault in each of those service games, two of them on break points.The second set was largely a formality, given Kwon’s rousing form and Nagal running on an empty tank. The Indian won just three points behind his first serve in the opening set and six in the second.The weather was admittedly hot and the bounce low, but there was nothing at the Olympic Tennis Centre that a top-100 professional would not have encountered on the Tour.To his credit, Nagal acknowledged his shortcomings.“I think more than mentally, it was physically. He played at a very high level. I was one level down, he was one level up. That made a big difference between me and him. He just outplayed me, that’s it,” Nagal told reporters after the match.The last match the Haryanvi had played was in the first round of the US Open qualifiers on August 25, where he lost in straight sets to Arthur Gea. That he ran out of gas after playing one match following a gap of more than three weeks may raise questions about his physical condition.The Indian team and its fans should also sober up to some ground realities.Suresh might serve bombs, but there were signs on Saturday, including his tendency to target the higher part of the net and a lack of soft hands at the net, that he is yet to develop an all-round game.
