The Hindu : Sport : Amritraj and Bopanna advance

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 19, 2006

Sport

Sport

Amritraj and Bopanna advance

K.C. Vijaya Kumar

CHIKMAGLUR: Under the afternoon sun, Prakash Amritraj wiped the sweat, twitched his shoulders and kept muttering, "Come on man, focus and finish it off." In the end, the Indian Davis Cupper swept past Henry Adjei Darko of Ghana 6-3, 6-2 to move into the second round of the Coffee Cup ATP Challenger tennis tournament at the Centenary Stadium Courts here on Tuesday.

Prakash had a tough start. Trailing 15-40, he clawed back to win the game and then played consistently to outplay his rival in a match that lasted 131 minutes.

The big-serving Darko faltered with a double fault in the fourth game, enabling Prakash to edge ahead 3-1. Darko was nearly broken in the sixth game as Prakash raced to a 40-15 lead.

However, Darko revved back in style and though the players were locked in deuce-mode for a prolonged time, the African finally won the game with an ace.

Errors let Darko down

The duo then held their serves and eventually Prakash won the set. In the second, Prakash broke Darko in the first and third games to grab the initiative and seal the match.

"I served smart, varied the pace, served some soft balls, mixed them with some hard ones and didn't allow him to settle into any rhythm," the winner revealed later.

The key difference was in terms of errors as Darko had 49 unforced errors compared to Prakash's 25 and that in effect summed up the match.

Earlier, seventh seed Rohan Bopanna took just an hour to defeat Slovakia's Kamil Capkovic 6-3, 6-2 while top seed Hyung Taik Lee of Korea scored a 6-4, 6-4 victory over qualifier Sergei Bubka. Fourth seed Lukasz Kubot of Poland and fifth seed Pavel Snobel of the Czech Republic also sailed into the second round with easy wins.

The results (first round):

Singles: Aleksandar Vlaski (SCG) bt Navdeep Singh 7-6(3), 6-3; Marco Chiudinelli (Sui) bt Orest Tereshchuk (Ukr) 6-1, 7-5; Laurent Recouderc (Fra) bt Viktor Troicki (SCG) 6-1, 3-6, 7-6; Toshihide Matsui (Jpn) bt Victor Bruthans (Svk) 7-6(2), 6-4; Hyung Taik Lee (Kor) bt Sergei Bubka (Ukr) 6-4, 6-4; Lukasz Kubot (Pol) bt Luke Bourgeois (Aus) 6-3, 6-1; Prakash Amritraj bt Henry Adjei Darko (Gha) 6-3, 6-2; Pavel Snobel (Cze) bt Herbert Wiltschnig (Aut) 6-4, 6-1; Jan Masik (Cze) bt Jesse Huta Galung (Ned) 7-6(5), 6-3; Karan Rastogi bt Kiran Nandkumar 6-3, 6-2; Rohan Bopanna bt Kamil Capkovic (Svk) 6-3, 6-2.

Doubles: Yen Hsun Lu (Tpe)/Danai Udomchoke (Tha) bt Kamala Kannan/Vijay Kannan 7-5, 6-4; Ravishankar Pathanjali/Vinod Sridhar bt Go Soeda (Jpn)/Toshihide Matsui (Jpn) 6-4, 5-7, 10-8; Sanchai Ratiwatana (Tha)/Sonchat Ratiwatana (Tha) bt Adrian Cruciat (Rom)/Aleksandar (SCG) 7-6(4), 7-5.

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