The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Ashutosh sails past Yannick

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Tuesday, Oct 23, 2007
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Sport - Tennis

Ashutosh sails past Yannick

Special Correspondent

GULBARGA: National champion Ashutosh Singh held his nerve for a 6-2, 6-4 win against countryman Yannick Nellord and advanced to the second round of the men’s singles in the Gulbarga Open ITF Futures circuit tennis tournament at the Chandrashekar Patil Stadium tennis courts here on Monday.

Ashutosh raced away with the first set, with breaks in the first and seventh games, but clearly looked fatigued. Nellord tested him with some deep serves but Ashutosh attacked his opponent’s second serve and often put away the attempted lobs for easy winners.

Nellord did break Ashutosh in the second game of the second set to go up 2-0 but the deficit only brought the best out of Ashutosh, who whipped back his forehand returns and hit some fine down-the-line winners.

Delayed inauguration

The long-drawn and much-delayed inauguration ceremony seemed to have annoyed all present. And after the hour-long ceremony the two pending singles were gone through under the sapping mid-afternoon sun.

Aditya Madkekar rattled off winners at will against Arjun Goutham’s poor backhand to win 6-2, 6-4 while Tushar Liberhan downed Ukrainian Ivan Anikanov 6-2, 6-2.

Tushar chased everything that Anikanov threw down at him and pegged back his rival to the baseline to win in straight sets. Another impressive winner on this day was qualifier Robert Belak of Serbia who blanked wild card entrant Kaushik Raju 6-0, 6-0.

The results: First round: (Indians unless specified): Robert Belak (Srb) bt Kaushik Raju 6-0, 6-0; Aditya Madkekar bt Arjun Goutham 6-2, 6-4; Alexey Kedryuk (Kaz) bt Vishnu Vardhan 6-4, 6-1; Tushar Liberhan bt Ivan Anikanov (Ukr) 6-2, 6-2; Ashutosh Singh bt Yannick Nellord 6-2, 6-4.

Doubles: First round: Ivan Cerovic (Cro) & Dekel Valtzer (Isr) bt Divij Sharan & Navdeep Singh 4-6, 6-4, 10-5; Rohan Gide & Rahil Makharia bt Vignesh Chandrasekhar & Ajai Selvaraj 7-6(5), 4-6, 10-8; Pavol Cervenak & Marek Semjan (Svk) bt Purav Raja & Sunil Kumar Sipaeya 6-3, 7-6(6); Vijay Kannan & Alexey Kedryuk (Kaz) bt N. Vijay Sundar & Kaushik Raju 6-1, 6-4.

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