The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Liberhan stuns Punna Vishal

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Tuesday, Jun 12, 2007
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Sport - Tennis

Liberhan stuns Punna Vishal

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Tushar Liberhan came up with the right shots at the crunch to beat Davis Cupper Punna Vishal 6-3, 7-6(7) in the first round of the $10,000 ITF men's Futures tennis tournament at the DLTA Complex here on Monday.

On a relatively mild day when a cool breeze breathed life into an otherwise oppressive atmosphere, Tushar held his nerve in the climax to deliver the knockout punch to the lanky Vishal who had made the semifinals at Chandigarh a fortnight ago.

Sharp return

Though he could not serve out the match in the 12th game of the second set and missed a matchpoint with a timid return in the tie-break, Tushar came up with a sharp return on the second matchpoint, after having saved a setpoint, to ensure at least one ATP point. He will meet the winner of the match between Navdeep Singh and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan in the second round.

Aditya Madkekar got past Sarvar Ikramov of Uzbekistan, as the latter retired after losing the first set in the tie-break. Similarly, the seventh seed, Vijay Kannan conceded defeat after two points in the third game of the second set against Robert Searle of Britain.

Retirements galore

The tough grind of the circuit and the unusually hot Delhi weather has made it difficult for many players to be in their best physical shape. Even the top-seeded doubles pair of Divij Sharan and Navdeep Singh retired after one set against wild card entrants Rohan Gide and Sumit Prakash Gupta, possibly to preserve themselves for the singles.

In the final qualifying round, the semifinalist of last week at Dehradun, the 16-year-old Tsung Hua Yang of Chinese Taipei lost in three sets to Andrew Fitzpatrick of Britain. The talented Taipei lad may still get back into the main draw as a lucky-loser, if a player fails to report for any of the remaining first round matches on Tuesday.

The results:

Singles (first round): Aditya Madkekar bt Sarvar Ikramov (Uzb) 7-6(4) (retd.); Tushar Liberhan bt Punna Vishal 6-3, 7-6(7); Vishnu Vardhan bt Shiva Sangwan 6-1, 6-2; Robert Searle (GBR) bt Vijay Kannan 7-6(3), 1-1 (retd.).

Qualifying event (third and final round): Andrew Fitzpatrick (GBR) bt Tsung-Hua Yang (Tpe) 6-3, 2-6, 6-1; Kiran Nandakumar bt Shantanu Rajput 6-3, 6-3; Shivang Mishra bt Sandeep Choudhary 6-3, 7-5; Kamala Kannan bt Rohit Choudhary 6-4, 6-2; Mithun Murali bt P.C. Vignesh 6-4, 7-6(5); Gursharan Singh bt Dai-Chiao Lin (Tpe) 7-6(1) (retd.); Nitten Kirrtane bt Ankesh Bhargava 6-2, 6-2; Rohan Gajjar bt Ashwin Vijayaraghavan 7-5, 6-2.

Doubles (pre-quarterfinals): Rohan Gide & Sumit Prakash Gupta bt Divij Sharan & Navdeep Singh 7-5 (retd.); Vijay Kannan & Vinod Sridhar bt Mithun Murali & Sriram Balaji 6-4, 6-2; Rohan Gajjar & Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan bt Kamala Kannan & Kiran Nandakumar 6-4, 6-3; Hsin-Han Lee & Tsung-Hua Yang (Tpe) bt Punna Vishal & Vishnu Vardhan 6-4, 6-3; Stephen Amritraj & Purav Raja bt Dai-Chiao Lin (Tpe) & Shivang Mishra 7-6(5), 3-6, 6-4; Dilshod Sharifi (Tjk) & Gurmehar Singh bt P.C. Vignesh & Ajai Selvaraj 6-2, 4-6, 6-4; Ashutosh Singh & Sunil Kumar bt Nitten Kirrtane & Sandeep Kirtane 6-2, 6-1.

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