Thursday, Dec 18, 2003
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Tennis
By Kamesh Srinivasan
Afreen Jahan executes a backhand return during her upset win over Liza Pereira in the women's singles second round of the DSCL Open National tennis championship in New Delhi on Wednesday.
The top two seeds in the women's section — Liza Pereira and Sai Jayalakshmy — were shown the door by little known teenagers from Hyderabad, Afreen Jahan and Punam Reddy, while the fast emerging Sanaa Bhambri subdued the third-seeded Archana Venkataraman, rather surprisingly in straight sets. The day, however, belonged to the 15-year-old Sanam Singh, the Chandigarh lad, as he ousted the fourth-seeded Ajay Ramaswami, the former National Games champion, after being a set down. It was all the more commendable as Sanam had just returned from the court after an energy-sapping encounter against Kaushik Raju in the junior event when he had prevailed 7-6 (7-5), 6-7 (8-10), 6-3. Hitting the ball early and with a silken touch, Sanam won 2-6, 7-6 (7-4), 6-4 to set up a quarterfinal against the sixth-seeded Kamala Kannan. Gurmehar Singh played a vibrant game to stop the eighth-seeded Parantap Chaturvedi in three sets, and will challenge the second-seeded Punna Vishal on the morrow. Afreen Jahan, training with coach C.V. Nagaraj at the School of Power Tennis in the Railway Recreational Club in Secunderabad for the last five years, showed that she was picking up the threads fast by hitting winners under pressure. Liza was erratic, but there was no denying the credit for the 16-year-old Afreen, a student of Kasturba Gandhi College, who had helped Andhra Pradesh clinch the inter-State under-18 national title recently at the NTA in Gurgaon. Punam Reddy, another lass from Hyderabad, bounced back from being 4-5 and 2-5 down in the two sets, when she had to save breakpoints, apart from a setpoint, to win 7-5, 7-5 against the seasoned Sai Jayalakshmy. Punam will meet Samrita Sekar in the quarterfinals. Sanaa had been upset about her defeat to Archana in the $ 10,000 tournament in Muzaffar Nagar this season, and the left-hander emphasised her renewed confidence in beating the tenacious Archana in straight sets. Parul Goswami continued with her good run after beating Sheethal Goutham in the first round, and will meet Delhi mate, Ankita Bhambri in the quarterfinals. Equally impressive was the manner in which the Dubai-based Navdeep Singh, who trains with coach John Hicks in the UK, raced to a 6-0, 3-0 lead against the top-seeded Rupesh Roy, the current national junior champion. The results (pre-quarterfinals): Men: Vinod Sridhar bt R. Narendran 6-0, 6-0; Somdev Dev Varman bt Gursharan Singh 6-3, 6-1; Kedar Tembe bt Saurav Panja 6-1, 6-4; Divij Sharan bt Tushar Liberhan 6-4, 4-6, 6-2; Kamala Kannan bt Amod Wakalkar 6-4, 6-3; Sanam Singh bt Ajay Ramaswami 2-6, 7-6 (7-4), 6-4; Gurmehar Singh bt Parantap Chaturvedi 2-6, 6-2, 6-3; Punna Vishal bt Vijayendra Laad 6-3, 7-6 (7-3). Women: Afreen Jahan bt Liza Pereira 6-7 (3-7), 6-3, 6-2; Shruti Dhawan bt Ragini Vimal 6-1, 6-2; Ankita Bhambri bt Preethi Subramaniam 6-0, 6-1; Parul Goswami bt Anupama Rajur 6-4, 6-2; Lata Assudani bt Kartiki Bhat 6-2, 6-0; Sanaa Bhambri bt Archana Venkataraman 7-5, 6-3; Samrita Sekar bt Geeta Manohar 7-5, 6-1; Punam Reddy bt Sai Jayalakshmy 7-5, 7-5. Boys: Navdeep Singh bt Rupesh Roy 6-0, 5-7, 6-4; J. Vishnu Vardhan bt Vivek Shokeen 4-6, 6-2, 6-2; Saurabh Kohli bt Aditya Madkekar 6-7 (5-7), 6-1, 6-3; Siddharth Gulati bt Syed Rahil 2-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7-4); Sanam Singh bt Kaushik Raju 7-6 (7-5), 6-7 (8-10), 6-3; Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan bt Tejasvi Rao 6-4, 6-1; Sumit Prakash Gupta bt Anshuman Dutta 6-0, 6-4; Divij Sharan bt Jitin Bishnoi 6-1, 6-2. Girls: Sanaa Bhambri bt G.K. Shweta 6-1, 6-1; Kartiki Bhat bt Krushmi Chheda 6-4, 6-0; Punam Reddy bt Prerna Mythri 6-1, 6-0; Vandana Murali bt Vishaka Sheoran 6-1, 7-6 (7-5); Parul Goswami bt Meghna Paritala 6-2, 6-4; Sandri Gangotri bt Parija Maloo 7-5, 6-3; Preethi Subramaniam bt Varsha Shivshankar 6-0, 7-5; Madura Ranganathan bt Sandhya Nagaraj 6-0, 6-3.
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