The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Rashein, Nimisha are champions

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Rashein, Nimisha are champions

Special Correspondent

— PHOTO: K. GOPINATH

THE CHAMPIONS: Winners of the AITA Champion Series tennis tournament in Bangalore on Friday.

BANGALORE: The favourites were to the fore as Rashien Samuel and Nimisha Mohan, both from Karnataka, emerged champions in the boys’ under-18 singles and girls’ under-18 singles respectively in the AITA Champion Series junior tennis championship which concluded at KSLTA courts here on Friday.

Rashein beat an error-prone Sagar Manjunath 6-2, 6-3 in 65 minutes, while the junior National champion Nimisha took 90 minutes to quell the challenge of another local girl, A.K. Padmapirya 6-3, 6-3.

Sagar, after his heroic effort against Nikhil Reddy in the semifinals on Thursday, seemed drained as he struggled to match the quick moving Rashein who kept pace with his forehand winners and sharp volleys.

Sagar did sparkle in patches with couple of down the line and cross court winners, but he was unable to sustain his effort.

Rashein, with breaks in the fourth and eighth games sealed the first set 6-2 and in the second, a determined Sagar, who played impressively in the first game, had a break point twice on Rashein’s serve, but the latter kept his poise and saved the game and charged ahead to a 5-1 lead and had three match points leading at 40-love.

Rashien, in sheer complacency, played loose and dropped serve.

There seemed to be a glimmer of hope for Sagar who then held his serve to make it 3-5. But Rahsien snuffed it out in the ninth game when he held serve to take set and title, forcing Sagar hit wide over the baseline.

Superior

In the girls’ u-18 final, Nimisha was in the fray for some match practice for her ITF events, and she was far superior to Padmapriya, but surprisingly enough, Nimisha unnecessarily got bogged down with prolonged rallies, before asserting her dominance and won 6-3, 6-3.

Saurabh Dilip Patil of Maharashtra, Nationally ranked No. 8 in the u-16 singles list, beat teammate Yash Deshpande 6-2, 4-6, 6-2 in the boys’ u-16 final, while second seed Neena Reddy of Tamil Nadu coasted to an easy 6-2, 6-2 title triumph over local girl Preethi Gokhale in the u-16 girls’ singles.

Mr. P.R. Ramaswamy, joint secretary, KSLTA, presided over and gave away the prizes.

The results (all finals):