The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Roy stuns Kamala Kannan

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 15, 2005

Sport

Sport - Tennis

Roy stuns Kamala Kannan

By Amitabha Das Sharma

KOLKATA, MARCH 14. Rupesh Roy came up with the only surprise of the day defeating Kamala Kannan in the singles first round of the ONGC ITF-Futures circuit event at the South Club here on Monday.

Roy made a remarkable comeback against Kannan, who had won the first set, producing a gritty turnaround in the second set tie-breaker as he first levelled set scores and then ran away with the decider to win 4-6, 7-6(7), 6-1.

The results in other matches — with only four singles scheduled on the first day — went as expected as top-seeded Sunil Kumar Sipaeya, third-seeded Vijay Kannan and eighth-seeded Ajay Ramaswami won with consummate ease. The rest of the day was devoted to the opening round of doubles where seeded pairs holded sway. The top-seeded combination of Vishal Uppal and Ajay Ramaswami and the fourth-seeded Rohan Bopanna and Vijay Kannan had no problems exerting their dominance.

The promising Karan Rastogi paired with Ashutosh Singh for another easy win as they dispelled the challenge from Chinese Taipei's Tai Wei Liu and Yew Ming Si in straight sets.

Exciting match

The singles fixtures, though truncated, derived the excitement from the Rupesh Roy-Kamala Kannan encounter, which lasted almost two hours. The first set saw the doughty Kannan serve with power and precision to push his junior opponent to the fence. Roy, the youngest player in the main draw, was simply outclassed in the first set as Kannan broke the former in the crucial fifth game and held on to his own service to move one up.

With Roy tidying up his game, the second set went with serve till the tie-breaker was enforced. Roy brought off his forehand returns to good effect and won the tie-breaker 9-7.

Apparently stung by the dogged fight-back, Kannan lost his way completely in the decider and bowed to the resolve of Roy, who forced a break in every game to win the set and match 4-6, 7-6(7), 6-1. The remaining singles first round matches will be played on Tuesday.

The results (Indians unless specified):

Singles (first round): Sunil Kumar Sipaeya bt Ravi Shankar Pathanjali 6-4, 6-2; Ajay Ramaswami bt Saurav Sukul 6-2, 6-1; Vijay Kannan bt Jaco Mathew 7-6(2), 6-3; Rupesh Roy bt Kamala Kannan 4-6, 7-6(7), 6-1.

Doubles (first round): Ajay Ramaswami & Vishal Uppal bt Aqeel Khan (Pak) & Shivang Mishra 6-4, 6-4; Gurmehar Singh & Navdeep Singh bt Oleg Ogorodov (Uzb) & Andrei Somov 7-5, 7-6(5); Rohan Bopanna & Vijay Kannan bt Matthew (GBr) & Adam Fass (U.S.) 6-0, 6-4; Karan Rastogi & Ashutosh Singh bt Tai Wei Liu & Wang Cheng Hsieh (Tpe) 6-1, 6-3.

Qualifying: Singles (final round): Peter Mayer-Tischer (Ger) bt Alon Moses 6-0, 6-0; Tetsuhiko Yamamoto (Jpn) bt Gursharan Singh 6-3, 6-3; Hayato Furukawa (Jpn) bt Sandeep Choudhary 6-1, 6-2; Gurmehar Singh bt V.S. Prashanth 1-6, 6-2, 6-2; Ajai Selvaraj bt Anirudh Thammanna 6-4, 6-2; Ranjeet Virali Murugesan bt Arjun Goutham 6-1, 3-6, 6-4; Wang-Cheng Hsieh (Tpe) bt Harshana Godamanna (Sri) 7-6(8-6), 6-1; Yew-Mig Si (Mas) bt Navdeep Singh 6-4, 2-6, 6-2.

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