The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Five Indians in last eight

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Thursday, Oct 01, 2009
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Five Indians in last eight

Principal Correspondent

Tough going for Daniel King-Turner
Good wins for Rohan Gajjar and Rupesh Roy

KOLKATA: Third seeded Vishnu Vardhan and fifth seeded Yuki Bhambri led a strong Indian field into the quarterfinals winning their respective pre-quarterfinal matches with consummate ease in the ONGC $15000 ITF Futures tennis tournament at the BTA Complex on Wednesday.

Seventh seeded Rohan Gajjar and eighth seeded Rupesh Roy also notched up good wins to strengthen the Indian presence in the last eight stage.

Unseeded Yannick Nelord, who removed sixth-seeded V.M. Ranjeet in the opening round on Tuesday, beat qualifier Chirstopher Marquis in the pre-quarterfinals. He will take on the second-seeded Alexander Satschko of Germany in the last eight.

Competitive stage

The last eight stage becomes quite competitive with more Indians taking on higher seeded foreign opponents. In one such encounter Rohan Gajjar takes on the top-seeded Daniel King-Turner of New Zealand while Yuki Bhambri takes on his doubles partner, fourth seeded Young-Jun Kim of Korea. In an all-Indian tie, promising Rupesh Roy will challenge Vishnu Vardhan.

Among the notable wins of the day, Vishnu and Yuki justified their higher seedings with straight-set wins while the two lower in the order — Rohan and Rupesh — had to work hard to get past the challenge of Mithun Murali and P.C. Vignesh respectively.

Surviving a scare

Top-seeded Daniel King-Turner also survived a scare against unseeded N. Vijay Sundar Prashanth. Daniel took 114 minutes to beat Prashanth, who made a brief comeback by winning the second set.

In the doubles quarterfinals the third seeded pair of Rupesh Roy and Vivek Shokeen crashed out losing to the Indo-Korean pair of Yuki and Kim.

The results (all Indians unless specified):

Singles (pre-quarterfinals): Daniel King-Turner (NZ) bt N. Vijay Sundar Prashanth 6-0, 2-6, 6-3; Rohan Gajjar bt Mithun Murali 6-2, 6-7(4), 6-4; Vishnu Vardhan bt Vijayant Malik 6-3, 6-4.

Rupesh Roy bt P.C. Vignesh 4-6, 6-3, 6-2; Yuki Bhambri bt Chin-Yu Huang (Tpe) 6-4, 6-1; Young-Jun Kim (Tpe) bt Karunuday Singh 6-1, 6-3; Yannick Nelord bt Christopher Marquis 6-3, 6-4; Alexander Satschko (Ger) bt Abhijeet Tiwari 6-2, 6-2.

Doubles (quarterfinals): Rohan Gajjar & Purav Raja bt Fariz Mohammed & P.C. Vignesh 6-2, 6-3; I-Ta Chen & Cheng-Peng Hsieh (Tpe) bt Mithun Murali & Vijay Sundar Prashanth 7-5, 4-6, 10-7.

Yuki Bhambri & Young-Jim Kim (Kor) bt Rupesh Roy & Vivek Shokeen 6-3, 6-4; Divij Sharan & Vishnu Vardhan bt Yannick Nelord & B. Vikram Reddy 6-2, 6-1.

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