The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Mixed fare from Indians

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 26, 2006

Sport

Sport - Tennis

Mixed fare from Indians

Kalyan Ashok

DHARWAD: On a hot and humid opening day, the Indians came up with a mixed fare at the $25,000 Dharwad ATP Challenger tennis championship here on Tuesday. Wild cards Kaushik Raju and Vishal Uppal, besides the star performer at Chikmagalur, Karan Rastogi, crashed out while Davis Cuppers Rohan Bopanna and Prakash Amritraj salvaged some Indian pride with contrasting wins to move into the second round at the Dharwad District Tennis Association Stadium.

It was rather unfortunate that young Raju's challenge was snuffed out early. Raju went down 6-1, 6-0 after he aggravated his back problem.

He needed a medical time out after the first set. Though he carried on gamely, the effort proved too much.

Avenges defeat

The fourth-seeded Lukasz Kubot of Poland avenged his Chikmagalur defeat, when he overpowered Karan Rastogi 6-2, 6-2 in 68 minutes. Kubot set a hot pace for Rastogi and kept pounding winners on both flanks as Rastogi struggled to come to grips with his returns.

The young Indian made a hash of it as he tried to force the pace. Kubot took control right from the start breaking Rastogi in the first game of the tie. The Indian counted too much on his power rather than coming up with a sound strategy to slow down the rampaging Pole.

Rastogi summed up the mood of the match, when after conceding a break point in the fifth game of the second set, he said, "great tennis." Pity that it was mostly coming from the other side of the net.

He dropped his serve in the fifth and did an encore in the seventh, which put him out of contention.

Vishal Uppal followed suit going down fighting to American qualifier Phillip King 4-6, 6-3, 6-4.

Inspired display

It was left to Bopanna to stop the Indian slide with an inspired display. The seventh-seeded Indian made short work of Jesse Hut Gulang of the Netherlands 6-3, 6-0. The Dutch player seemed hell bent on hitting every return out of sight as Bopanna kept him under pressure with his fierce first serve and strong forehand.

Shortly before Bopanna wrapped up his convincing win, his Davis Cup mate and the sixth seed, Prakash Amritraj overcame a few hiccups to put it across steady baseliner Marco Chiduinelli of Switzerland in two tie-break sets at 7-6(2), 7-6(2) on court three.

The results (first round, Indians unless specified): Singles: Lukasz Kubot (Pol) bt Karan Rastogi 6-2, 6-2; Prakash Amritraj bt Marco Chiudinelli (Sui) 7-6(2), 7-6(2); Denis Isotomin (Uzb) bt Aleksanda Vlaski (SCG ) 6-3, 7-6(4); Rohan Bopanna bt Jesse Hut Gulang (Ned) 6-3, 6-0; Phillip King (U.S.) bt Vishal Uppal 4-6, 6-3, 6-4; Viktor Troicki (SCG) bt Satoshi Iwabuchi (Jpn) 6-3, 6-2; Anit Inbar (Isr) bt Viktor Bruthans (Svk) 7-5, 6-2.

Doubles: Sanchai & Sonchet Ratiwtna (Tha) bt Arun Prakash & Vardhan 6-4, 6-0; Rieschik & Trociki (SCG) bt P. Ravishankar & Vinod Sridhar 6-4, 6-3; Capkovic & Lukas (Svk) 6-3, 6-1.

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