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Wednesday, May 07, 2008
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Sanaa overpowers Kelsey

Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: On a day of predominantly one-sided matches, third-seeded Sanaa Bhambri was forced to put her best foot forward by unseeded American Kelsey Sundaram in a first round match of the BSNL-Kerala Open ITF women’s tennis tournament at the TTC courts here on Tuesday.

Sanaa had to sweat it out for two hours and 15 minutes to defeat a determined Kelsey 7-5, 3-6, 6-3.

The other seeds, including top seed Isha Lakhani and second-seeded Rushmi Chakravarthi, hardly faced any trouble before booking their passage into the pre-quarterfinals.

Isha, however, was shown the exit in doubles action later in the day as she and her partner, Parul Goswami, were stunned by the hard-hitting combination of Madga Okruashvili (Georgia) and Poojashree Venkatesha. The duo put it past the top-seeded pair at 6-2, 6-4.

Early lead

Sanaa looked as if she was all set to take the same route as Isha and Rushmi, as she got an early break to lead 2-0. However, while serving for the first set, she was broken by a rejuvenated Kelsey, who pushed the set to the distance. But, Sanaa took that set by breaking Kelsey in the 12th game.

Though Sanaa once again worked herself to an early 2-0 lead in the second set, Kelsey negated the advantage by breaking back in the third game.

The Indian suddenly looked out of sorts thereafter as Kelsy drew level breaking serve in the seventh and ninth games.

Tough decider

The decider too proved to be a tough one as the two battled it out for supremacy. However, it was Sanaa who had the last laugh as she kept her nerve and closed out the match with a double break in the fifth and ninth games.

Top-seeded Isha was too strong for qualifier Dipti Srivastava (6-1, 6-0) in her opening round match.

The results (Indians unless otherwise mentioned):

Singles: First round: Shalini Sahoo bt Neha Sujit Nair 6-0, 6-0; Rushmi Chakravarthi bt Volha Kalodzitsa (Blr) 6-2,6-2; Madga Okruashvili (Geo) bt Alexandra Riley (U.S.) 6-1, 6-1. Poojashree Venkatesha bt Vishakha Sheoran 6-0, 6-0; Asha Nandakumar bt Goele Lemmens (Bel) 6-4, 6-3.

Geeta Manohar bt Yuri Kurashima (Jpn) 6-1, 6-0; Isha Lakhani bt Dipti Srivastava 6-1, 6-0; Prerana-Mythri Appineni bt Archana Venkatraman 6-4, 6-3. Sanaa Bhambri bt Kelsey Sundaram (U.S.) 7-5, 3-6, 6-3; Parija Maloo bt Kesiki Jayapalan 6-3, 6-2.

Doubles: Pre-quarterfinals: Trang Huynh Phuong Dai (Vie) & Nicola Mooney (Gbr) bt Aishwarya Agarwal & Ashmitha Easwaramurthi 7-6(5), 6-0. Shweta Kakhandki Gadigeppa & Asha Nandakumar bt Neha Sujit Nair & Parvathy Vijayan 6-0, 6-1. Miki Miyamura (Jpn) & Min-Hwa Yu (Kor) bt Volha Kalodzitsa (Blr) & Julia Matojan (Est) 6-1, 6-2. Magda Okruashvili (Geo) & Poojashree Venkatesha bt Parul Goswami & Isha Lakhani 6-2, 6-4.

Prerana-Mythri Appineni & Goele Lemmens (Bel) bt Geeta Manohar & Archana Venkatraman 6-4, 6-1.

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