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Wednesday, May 14, 2008
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Ashutosh Singh wins a thriller

Special Correspondent

New Delhi: Ashutosh Singh served close to his best for three hours, as he survived two matchpoints, to record a 6-3, 6-7(6), 7-6(6) victory over Alexandre Kudryavtsev of Russia in the first round of the SAIL Open $50,000 Challenger tennis tournament at the DLTA Complex here on Tuesday.

The 25-year-old local lad, a last minute wild card recipient after Karan Rastogi pulled out, Ashutosh provided the silver lining on a day when the rest of the Indians, including Davis Cuppers Prakash Amritraj and Harsh Mankad, failed to pull their weight.

In a dramatic contest of high quality, Ashutosh showed renewed confidence in his ability to battle an opponent who had stretched Carlos Moya to three sets in the Chennai Open earlier in the season. He did miss two matchpoints in the second set tie-break at 6-4, but quite significantly Ashutosh did not let his shoulders drop and fought till the end.

He was duly rewarded for his perseverance as the 22-year-old Kudryavtsev, with an intimidating big game, missed two matchpoints at 6-4 in the third set tie-break, including a sitter on the first matchpoint when he slammed wide.

Indecisive play

Except for a brief moment of indecisive play when he came up with an inviting second serve on his first matchpoint, Ashutosh played a superb game throughout, after he had set the tempo by breaking the Russian in the sixth game of the first set. That was the only break of serve in the whole match, which spoke for the quality of the battle.

In the quarterfinals, the 602nd ranked Ashutosh, who has already assured himself of five ATP points, will take on Colin Ebelthite of Australia.

Meanwhile, Prakash Amritraj was a bit slow on his feet and kept missing volleys in going down rather tamely to the seventh-seeded Brendan Evans of the US.

Harsh Mankad had his chances against Thomas Oger of France when he led 4-2 in the first set, but lost his way in two keenly contested sets.

The results: Singles: First round: Yen-Hsun Lu (Tpe) bt Mustafa Ghouse 7-6(4), 2-6, 6-0; Thomas Oger (Fra) bt Harsh Mankad 7-6(5), 6-4; Colin Ebelthite (Aus) bt Jae Sung An (Kor) 6-3, 2-0 (retd.); Ashutosh Singh bt Alexandre Kudryavtsev (Rus) 6-3, 6-7(6), 7-6(6); Go Soeda (Jpn) bt Olivier Charroin (Fra) 6-1, 6-2; Guillermo Alcaide (Esp) bt Gouichi Motomura (Jpn) 6-3, 6-4; Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi (Pak) bt Rajeev Ram (US) 6-3, 7-6(1); Alex Bogdanovic (GBR) bt Sun Peng (Chn) 7-6(1), 6-4; Brendan Evans (US) bt Prakash Amritraj 6-3, 6-3; Samuel Groth (Aus) bt Rohan Gide 6-2, 6-1.

Doubles: Pre-quarterfinals: Ricardo Mello (Bra) and Gilles Muller (Lux) bt Travis Rettenmaier (US) and Sunil Kumar 6-0, 7-6(4); Rohan Gajjar and Purav Raja bt Tushar Liberhan and Navdeep Singh 3-6, 6-1, 10-5; Guillermo Alcaide (Esp) and Alex Satschko (Ger) bt Alun Jones (Aus) and Kristian Pless (Den) 6-4, 6-2; Mohammed Al Ghareeb (Kuw) and Ilia Marchenko (Ukr) 7-6(3), 7-6(9).

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