The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Vinod stuns Jeevan

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Wednesday, Jun 06, 2007
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Vinod stuns Jeevan

Special Correspondent

DEHRADUN: He may be younger, with greater potential and a better ranking, but Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan continued to find Vinod Sridhar a stumbling block as he failed to cross the first hurdle in the ONGC $10,000 ITF men's Futures tennis tournament at the Shanti Academy here on Tuesday.

Having lost to the crafty Vinod in the first round at Chandigarh last week in straight sets, Jeevan did not have the confidence to tackle the fellow left-hander from Chennai. He did get into some rhythm in the second set but Vinod played sharp to close out the match 6-1, 6-4.

The 18-year-old Jeevan, who has had much better results earlier in the men's circuit, is a classic example of talented youngsters getting bogged down for want of direction and proper planning.

Tough match ahead

Vinod, however, will have it tough when he takes on the top-seeded Karan Rastogi in the second round. Karan has won both his matches against Vinod in straight sets, and going by the way he handled the Briton, Robert Searle, in the first round, Karan could look forward to a longer stay in the event than what he had managed here last year.

There was disappointment for the sixth-seeded Navdeep Singh who totally lost his way after having fought his way back and being up 2-0 in the decider against Sarvar Ikramov of Uzbekistan. Navdeep lacked the footwork at the end to back his strong game.

The fluent-stroking Ashutosh Singh also disappointed everyone as he went down despite playing a fine game throughout the match against qualifier Jonathan Kinsella of Britain. From having a gamepoint to force the tie-break in the decider, the seventh-seeded Ashutosh made three mistakes including a double fault to face match-point to undo all his good work.

Sriram Balaji recovered from a slow start to set up a second round clash against Prakash Amritraj.

The results: Singles (first round): Karan Rastogi bt Robert Searle (GBR) 6-3, 6-1; Vinod Sridhar bt Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan 6-1, 6-4; Aditya Madkekar bt Sandeep Kirtane 4-6, 6-2 (conceded); Sarvar Ikramov (Uzb) bt Navdeep Singh 6-3, 6-7(2), 6-2; Kamala Kannan bt Rohan Gajjar 5-7, 6-2, 6-3; Jonathan Kinsella (GBR) bt Ashutosh Singh 6-3, 3-6, 7-5; Hsin-Han Lee (Tpe) bt Satoshi Yoshino (Jpn) 6-2, 7-5; Sriram Balaji bt Kiran Nandakumar 1-6, 6-3, 6-4; Prakash Amritraj bt Mithun Murali 6-4, 6-2; Matthew Smith bt Punna Vishal 6-3, 6-3; Purav Raja bt Varun Walia 6-2, 6-0; Tsung-Hua Yang (Tpe) bt Shivang Mishra 6-1, 6-0; Vivek Shokeen bt Siddharth Raj 6-1, 6-0.

Doubles (pre-quarterfinals): Stephen Amritraj and Mustafa Ghouse bt Kamala Kannan and Kiran Nandakumar 7-6(5), 7-5.

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