The Hindu : Sport : Indians flatter to deceive

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 24, 2007
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Sport

Indians flatter to deceive

Special Correspondent

Yuki and Rohan lose from a position of advantage
Eitzinger/Oswald ousted in doubles

GULBARGA: The Indians flattered to deceive in the first round of the Gulbarga Open ITF Futures circuit. At the Chandrasekhar Patil Stadium tennis courts here on Tuesday, both Yuki Bhambri and Rohan Gajjar had their seeded opponents by the throat only to let go the advantage and end up on the losing side.

The 15-year-old Yuki led 4-1 and 6-4 in the third set tie-breaker against third seed Ivan Cerovic of Croatia before contriving to lose 7-6(8), 4-6, 6-7(6). Rohan pocketed the first set 6-3 against Slovakia’s Marek Semjan before going down in the next two at 3-6, 4-6. Rohan in fact led 2-0 and 3-1 in the third before a series of errors did him in.

At Bellary, Yuki lost to Dekel Valtzer after a game fight. Here too Yuki had his much fancied opponent on the run. Going with serve, the young Yuki nosed ahead after being 8-8 in the tie-breaker for the first set. In the second, however, the left-handed Cerovic played deep and incisive strokes to get the better of Yuki.

Fine ground strokes

The decider saw some fine ground strokes from both the players. Cerovic broke Yuki in the seventh but the Delhi lad hit back in the 10th to go back to level pegging. In the tie-breaker Cerovic twice hit it long as Yuki jumped to a handy 4-1 lead before erring twice. Yuki went 6-4 up with service in hand but dropped both to allow the Croatian to wrap up the match.

In the morning Navdeep Singh began well but surrendered the initiative to fourth seed Dekel Valtzer of Israel. Philipp Oswald of Austria ousted the error prone fifth seed Darko Madjarovski of Serbia.

Late on Monday night the top seeded doubles pair of Rainer Eitzinger and Oswald and the winners at Bellary last week — Ashutosh Singh and Vivek Shokeen — crashed out. While Rohan Gajjar and Vishnu Vardhan accounted for the top seeds at 6-3, 7-6(4), the Indian duo lost to Tushar Liberhan and Rupesh Roy.

The results (Indians otherwise specified): Men’s singles: Philipp Oswald (Aut) bt Darko Madjarovski (Srb) 6-4, 6-4; Dekel Valtzer (Isr) bt Navdeep Singh 7-5, 6-3; Ajai Selvarj bt Vijayant Malik 2-6, 6-3, 7-5; Ivan Cerovic (Cro) bt Yuki Bhambri 6-7(8), 6-4, 7-6(6); Vivek Shokeen bt Vignesh Chandrasekhar 6-3, 7-6(3); Marek Semjan (Svk) bt Rohan Gajjar 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.

Doubles: Robert Belak /Darko Madjarovski (Srb) bt Arjun Goutham/Aditya Madkekar 6-3, 6-4; Rohan Gide/Vishnu Vardhan bt Rainer Eitinger/Philipp Oswald (Aut) 6-3, 7-6(4); Ivan Anikanov (Ukr)/Shivang Mishra bt Jagdeesan Kumar/Venkatesh Reddy 6-3, 6-2; Tushar Liberhan/Rupesh Roy bt Ashutosh Singh/Vivek Shokeen 6-2, 6-4.

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