The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Rohan Bopanna drubs Toshihide Matsui

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Dec 08, 2005

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Sport - Tennis

Rohan Bopanna drubs Toshihide Matsui

Kamesh Srinivasan

CHANDIGARH: Davis Cupper Rohan Bopanna blew away the challenge from the seventh-seeded Toshihide Matsui of Japan 6-2, 6-3 in the quarterfinals of the Microsoft $10,000 ITF Futures tennis tournament at the CLTA Complex here on Wednesday.

The 25-year-old Bopanna, enjoying a career-best ranking of 275 and seeded No.1, fired 16 aces in mowing down the feeble opposition from the Japanese.

Aisam-ul-Haq posts win

Bopanna will meet his former doubles partner, Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi of Pakistan who smacked 21 aces to outwit another Japanese, the third-seeded Go Soeda, in three well-contested sets.

Qureshi has been struggling with an injury after the Davis Cup World Group play-off against Chile, but can be a difficult customer when he gets into form as he showed in beating both Paradorn Srichaphan and Danai Udomchoke to see Pakistan past Thailand in the Davis Cup in March this year.

Meanwhile, two other Indians in the fray, Karan Rastogi and Vishaal Uppal were beaten in contrasting styles. The fifth-seeded Karan went down with guns blazing, 7-5 in the tie-break of the third set in which he was up a break at 3-1.

Both Karan and Vishaal recovered from their singles defeat to make the doubles semifinals, with different partners, while national champions, Divij Sharan and Vivek Shokeen beat the fourth-seeded Pathanjali Ravishankar and Vinod Sridhar in straight sets.

The results (quarterfinals):

Singles: Rohan Bopanna bt Toshihide Matsui (Jpn) 6-2, 6-3; Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi (Pak) bt Go Soeda (Jpn) 6-2, 5-7, 6-4; Frank Moser (Ger) bt Karan Rastogi 6-4, 2-6, 7-6 (5); Jae-Sung An (Kor) bt Vishaal Uppal 6-3, 6-1.

Doubles: Frank Moser (Ger) and Vishaal Uppal bt Tushar Liberhan and Navdeep Singh 6-4, 6-2; Divij Sharan and Vishaal Uppal bt Pathanjali Ravishankar and Vinod Sridhar 6-4, 6-3; Karan Rastogi and Ashutosh Singh bt Jae Sung An (Kor) and Dominic Stockler (Sui) 6-3, 6-1; Chu Huan Yi (Tpe) and Hiu Tung Yu (Hkg) bt Marico Torres (Bra) and Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi (Pak) 6-3, 6-4.

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