The Hindu : Sport : Sanam takes title

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 18, 2005

Sport

Sport

Sanam takes title

Kamesh Srinivasan

Sanam Singh with the trophy. — Photo: Sandeep Saxena

NEW DELHI: Sanam Singh showed as to why he is tipped as the best talent in the country, as he won his maiden men's title in the BSNL $10,000 ITF Futures tennis tournament at the DLTA Complex here on Saturday.

The 17-year-old Chandigarh lad outplayed Radoslav Nijaki of Poland 6-2, 6-2 in the final, in just over an hour of entertaining tennis.

Belying his small build, Sanam had eight aces for the match while Nijaki had only four.

On a cold morning, when the start was delayed by about an hour because of the wet surface, Sanam raced to a 4-0 lead, breaking the big-built Polish lad in the first and third games. The fact that Sanam conceded only five points in those first four games was an indication of the hot pace that he set for the contest.

Sanam fired three aces in a row to win that fourth game. He was a class act in the eighth, when he saved three breakpoints at 0-40 and went on to hammer two successive aces to wrap up the set.

Into the second set, the Polish lad saved two breakpoints in the first game but dropped serve in the third and fifth games. Sanam whipped a backhand crosscourt winner on breakpoint in that fifth game, having set that up with a winner off the same flank.

Though he came up with a doublefault on his first matchpoint and netted a volley on the second, Sanam closed it out assertively enough.

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