The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Irwin downs Navdeep Singh

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, May 31, 2005

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Sport - Tennis

Irwin downs Navdeep Singh

Kamesh Srinivasan

GURGAON: Wild card Navdeep Singh put up a good fight against seventh-seeded Richard Irwin of Britain but lost 6-7(5), 4-6 as he failed to capitalise on his chances, in the first round of the ITF Satellite tennis tournament at the NTA Complex here on Monday.

The former national junior champion, the 19-year-old Navdeep Singh played an all-round game, but lacked the intensity of concentration and erred on key points in conceding the advantage. He failed to drive the first set in his favour after taking a 5-3 lead.

The 20-year-old Irwin, who had won only two main draw matches in nine weeks of professional tennis this season in Europe, came up with a big return to take a 6-5 lead in the tie-break. A tame return by Navdeep on the next point ended the set.

In the second set, Navdeep was broken in the ninth game and the Briton served out the match, which lasted just over two hours, in the next game.

Domination continues

In the only other main draw singles match, the second-seeded Vijay Kannan continued his domination over wild card Ashutosh Singh with a 6-3, 6-4 triumph. It was the fourth victory for Vijay in as many meetings against the Delhi lad.

Vijay played a crafty game and put the backhand slice to terrific effect even on the true-bouncing hard courts. In fact, Vijay had sliced through Ashutosh's challenge on clay in Sri Lanka earlier in the season when he dropped only one game. Ashutosh tended to over-hit and mis-hit a few volleys in losing his way.

The results: Singles (first round): Richard Irwin (GBR) bt Navdeep Singh 7-6(5), 6-4; Vijay Kannan bt Ashutosh Singh 6-3, 6-4.

Qualifying event (third and final round): V. M. Ranjeet bt Sandeep Choudhary 6-2, 6-1; Guillaume Tarralle (Fra) bt Xiao Peng Lai (Hkg) 6-3, 6-1; Nitin Kirtane bt Boris Fetbroyt (US) 7-5, 6-1; NIma Roshan (US) bt Farid Alam 6-1, 6-2; Yannick Nelord bt Saurav Sukul 6-3, 6-4; J. Vishnu Vardhan bt Rohan Gide 6-4, 6-2; Dmitri Makeyev (Kaz) bt Porus Jetli (US) 6-1, 6-1; Vijay Sundar Prashant bt Yew Ming Si (Mas) 6-4, 6-4.

Doubles (pre-quarterfinals): Rohan Bopanna/Vijay Kannan bt Sandeep Choudhary/Arjun Goutham 6-2, 6-2; Hayato Furukawa/Tetsuhiro Yamamoto (Jpn) bt Dmitriy Ivanov (Uzb)/Dmitri Makeyev (Kaz) 6-2, 6-3; Kamala Kannan/Vinod Sridhar bt Tushar Liberhan/Navdeep Singh 7-6(5), 6-2; Nitin Kirtane/Vishaal Uppal bt Carl-Henrik Hansen (Swe)/Stephen Mitchell (RSA) 6-4, 6-3; Pathanjali Ravishankar/Gurmehar Singh bt Saketh Sai Myneni/P. C. Vignesh 6-3, 6-1; Salifu Mohammed (Gha)/Guillaume Tarralle (Fra) bt David Brewer/Richard Irwin (GBR) 4-6, 6-4, 6-0; Shivang Mishra/V. M. Ranjeet bt Rohan Gide/Aditya Madkekar 7-6(3), 6-1; Jaco Mathew/Ashutosh Singh bt Sumit Prakash Gupta/Saurav Sukul 7-6 (4), 3-6, 6-4.

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