The Hindu : Tushar takes title

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 08, 2004

Sport

Sport - Tennis

Tushar takes title

By Our Special Correspondent

Tushar Liberhan (left) and I-Hsuan Hwang who won the boys' and girls' title respectively.

NEW DELHI, FEB. 7. Usually, well begun is half done. But Tushar Liberhan and I-Hsuan Hwang proved otherwise as they recovered from poor starts, and swung their matches around to win the boys' and girls' titles respectively in the Adidas ITF junior tennis tournament at the DLTA Complex here on Saturday.

Despite struggling with problems of vision, that forced him to change his contact lenses at 0-5 in the first set, Tushar finished quite creditably, under insufficient floodlights, in a high quality fare against his doubles partner, Divij Sharan. The Chandigarh lad won 0-6, 7-5, 7-5 and jumped for joy in quite an uncharacteristic fashion, when Divij netted an half-volley on the third matchpoint.

Divij was under control initially, and Tushar literally had to drag himself into the match. After losing the first set in a hurry, Tushar broke Divij in the sixth game, but dropped the next on a doublefault. It was perhaps a bout of nerves that saw Divij dropping serve in the twelfth game.

Tushar looked to be on a roll thereafter when he raced to a 5-2 lead, breaking the left-hander in the second and sixth games, though he himself had been broken in the fifth. It was here that Divij showed his fighting qualities as he saved a matchpoint in holding serve in the eighth game. A couple of bad calls, understandable as the light was poor, saw Tushar dropping serve in the ninth game. Divij served solidly to hold serve in the tenth, and Tushar was equal to the task in the next game.

In what proved to be the last game, Divij faced two matchpoints at 15-40, but came up with an admirable service winner to save one. On the next point, Divij approached the net only to bury a half-volley into the net, in bringing the curtains down on an exciting contest.

The effort fetched Tushar 100 ITF points that would push his ranking up from No. 52 in the world. The 42nd ranked Divij, who had lost his third singles final at the venue, following the defeats in the junior and senior events in the National championship in December, will have 75 points added to his collection.

The girls' final was equally lively. The way Pichittra Thongdach of Thailand started the contest, it looked as if she would blow I-Hsuan Hwang off the court. It was with such punch that the Thai girl smacked winners in the first part of the match, on either flank. However, the Taipei girl knew what to do, as she had beaten the Thai in the final last week in Kolkata.

Hwang turned the match around with a break in the seventh game of the second set, and then broke once more in the fifth game of the decider to pocket the title with a 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 triumph.

After all, well begun is only half done. You need to work harder to finish the other half.

The sports marketing manager of Adidas, S. Ganesh, gave away the prizes.

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