The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Wiltschnig advances

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 15, 2006

Sport

Sport - Tennis

Wiltschnig advances

Kamesh Srinivasan

New Delhi: The top-seed Herbert Wiltschnig of Austria dispelled doubts about his hunger for success and more ATP points as he outplayed Vinod Sridhar 6-0, 6-4 in the pre-quarterfinals of the Masters event in the ITF Satellite tennis circuit at the DLTA Complex here on Tuesday.

The 30-year-old who has won two titles from three finals so far, stormed away with the first set in 20 minutes even as Vinod struggled to strike rhythm.

Improved display

Into the second set, there was some fight early on as Vinod broke back for 2-2 after dropping serve in the third game, but dropped serve again in the ninth game which proved decisive.

Vinod ended up with 17 circuit points and that fetched him six ATP points. Wiltschnig has already won the circuit with an unbeatable lead. He had assured himself of 43 ATP points, including a bonus of eight.

But the win on Tuesday didn't fetch him any additional ATP point. In the next three rounds, Wiltschnig has only three ATP points at stake.

Rain plays spoil sport

Owing to persistent rain, only one more pre-quarterfinal match could be completed. The fifth-seeded Manuel Jorquera of Italy had little trouble beating Mustafa Ghouse 6-1, 6-1. Ghouse who lost nine games in a row at one stage, was happy to collect three ATP points.

The sixth-seeded Pathanjali Ravishankar squandered a 4-2 lead in the first set to trail 4-6, 1-3 against Murad Inoyatov of Uzbekistan when rain intervened. Inoyatov had saved two breakpoints in that fifth game from 15-40 to be on deuce.

Kedriouk leads

Alexey Kedriouk led 6-2, 4-3 against the eighth-seeded Yuri Bezeruk of Australia in the fourth pre-quarterfinal.

With the early celebrations of Holi in the air, the referee Puneet Gupta called off the matches in the evening rather than wait for rain to stop and possibly play under the floodlights in the night. He also announced that the matches would resume only from 3.30 p.m. on Wednesday owing to Holi.

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