The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Vijay Kannan survives

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Friday, Oct 21, 2005

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Sport - Tennis

Vijay Kannan survives

Kamesh Srinivasan

NEW DELHI: Pushed to a corner, the wiry Vijay Kannan counter-punched his way out of trouble to post a 7-6(9), 7-6(2) win against Tushar Liberhan in the men's quarterfinals of the DSCL National tennis championship at the DLTA Complex here on Thursday.

On a day when local girls Parul Goswami and qualifier Shalini Sahoo projected a healthy image of the quality of tennis in the capital by making the women's semifinals, it was the 25-year-old Vijay Kannan who impressed with a high quality fare.

The ONGC employee from Chennai has had a miserable run in the recent four-week ITF Satellite circuit in which he managed to win a mere three matches. On this day the former national champion was quite sharp, athletic and crafty as he handled the 19-year-old Tushar's challenge with assurance.

Sign of nerves

In fact, Tushar had three setpoints in the tiebreak of the first set, but was unable to convert any of them. He missed one of them with a doublefault, a sure sign of nerves as he had otherwise got all the first serves in the tiebreak. Eventually, he put a forehand wide in losing the set and the initiative.

In the second set, Vijay came up with an exquisite backhand passing shot to take a 5-2 lead in the tiebreak and Tushar doublefaulted to face four matchpoints. He netted a forehand to lose the contest.

The top-seeded Sunil Kumar pushed his game up when it mattered as he subdued the former national junior champion Navdeep Singh 6-4, 6-4, pulling through from 3-4 in both sets.

Too good

In the women's section, the top-seeded Isha Lakhani proved too good even as the second-seeded Sonal Phadke continued to fight her way through in overcoming a tough poser from the seventh-seeded Geeta Manohar.

Parul was particularly impressive as she hit her way past the gutsy third seed Archana Venkataraman. Parul was able to pull through from 3-3 in both the sets and will now challenge Sonal.

Qualifier Shalini had it easy against the lanky Varsha Shivshankar, a fellow qualifier, as the latter was unable to punch her shots despite playing the right strokes at the right time.

The results (quarterfinals): Men: Sunil Kumar bt Navdeep Singh 6-4, 6-4; Kamala Kannan bt Arjun Goutham 6-4, 3-6, 6-2; Ashutosh Singh bt Siddharth Patil 6-1, 6-2; Vijay Kannan bt Tushar Liberhan 7-6 (9), 7-6 (2).

Women: Isha Lakhani bt Anushree Thamanna 6-1, 6-1; Shalini Sahoo bt Varsha Shivshankar 6-2, 6-3; Parul Goswami bt Archana Venkataraman 6-3, 6-3; Sonal Phadke bt Geeta Manohar 6-3, 3-6, 6-4.

Boys: Sumit Prakash Gupta bt Krishna Karsolia 6-3, 6-2; Arnav Jain bt Nikunj Siwach 6-1, 6-0; Kinshuk Sharma bt Rohan Gide 7-6 (3), 6-4; Saket Sai Myneni bt P. C. Vignesh 6-3, 7-6 (3).

Girls: Madura Ranganathan bt Prerna Bhambri 2-6, 6-2, 6-4; Poojashree Venkatesh bt Shalini Sahoo 6-3, 6-1; Shwata Kumari Solanki bt Tejasvini Datla 6-3, 6-2; G. K. Shweta bt Karina Ahuja 6-3, 6-0.

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