Pune, November 13 : Press release
India No.1 Prajnesh Gunneswaran, No.2 Sumit Nagal, No.3 Ramkumar Ramanathan and No.4 Sasikumar Mukund scored contrasting wins to move into the pre-quarterfinals of the singles event at the KPIT MSLTA Challenger. Indiaโs 20 year old Manish Sureshkumar already made it to the last sixteen ensuring 5 Indians will feature in the pre-quarterfinal matches tomorrow.
On a mixed day for India, where top four players won, eight Indian Players including 10th seeded Saketh Myneni were ousted in the singles.
Fighting his personal loss, top seeded Prajnesh Gunneswaran took just 49 minutes to demolish Chandril Sood 61 63. Third seeded Sumit Nagal came back from 14 down in the second set to stop a fighting Aryan Goveas 63 76(5) in 1 hour 16 minutes. Sixth seeded Ramkumar Ramnathan hammered 8 aces on his way to a 63 64 win over Greek player Markos Kalovelonis. Eighth seeded Sasikumar Mukund set up the Indian quarter with a lop sided 62 63 win over Japanese Doubles Specialist Toshide Matsui.
In other matches involving Indians, Turkish Ergi Kirkin came back from a losing position to upset 10th seeded Saketh Myneni 36 75 64 in the longest match of the day. Saketh led 63 42 before Kirkin made a comeback to take the second set and lead 3-0 in third. Saketh clawed his way back to get the scores level at 4-4 but couldnโt keep the momentum and went down.
Fifteenth Brydan Klein of Britian also came back from being down 24 in the third set to end the challenge of Siddarth Rawat winning 61 36 64 in a 2 hour 2 minute match. Rawat who was up a break couldn’t capatilise on the lead and went down narrrowly.
Wild card Dhruv Sunish gave a good account of himself taking thirteenth seeded Ivan Nedelko of Russia to the ropes. But the experienced 33 year old Nedelko ranked 617 places above the 19 year old Sunish prevailed 63 57 62. Seventh seeded Roberto Ortega-Olmedo of Spain gave a lesson in tennis to young Anirudh Chandrasekhar winning 63 62
Twelfth seeded Cem Ilkel of Turkey ended the lucky run of Alternate Kaza Vinayak Sharma winning 62 61. Fourteenth seed Dutchman Tim Van Rijthoven ended the Challenge of qualifier Dalwinder Singh 63 61 in less than an hour.
In one of the best matches of the day, wildcard Aryan Goveas justified the wildcard awarded to him as he gave good account of himself pushing the fancied Sumit Nagal to a tiebreak in the second set having lost the first set 3-6. Goveas rushed to a 4-1 lead but inexperience showed as he fumbled to let Nagal come back to make the score 4-4 .
Nagal broke Goveas in the 9th game to go up 5-4, Goveas broke back Nagal immediately to level scores at 5-5. Hold of serves by players saw a tiebreak. At 3-3 in the tiebreak Goveas showed his sporting side by awarding an ace to Nagal, which was called out. The momentum turned for Nagal who then snapped the set, Goveas lost the match but won the hearts of fair number of spectators who turned out for the match
Following are the Results ( 2nd Round)
[1] Prajnesh Gunneswaran (IND) d. Chandril Sood (IND) 61 63
[3] Sumit Nagal (IND) d. Aryan Goveas (IND) 63 76(5)
[4] Steven Diez (CAN) d. Yusuke Takahashi (JPN) 62 62
[6] Ramkumar Ramanathan (IND) d. Markos Kalovelonis (GRE) 63 64
[7] Roberto Ortega-Olmedo (ESP) d. Anirudh Chandrasekar (IND) 63 62
[8] Sasikumar Mukund (IND) d. Toshide Matsui (JPN) 62 63
[9] Duckhee Lee (KOR) d. Aziz Dougaz (TUN) 63 64
Ergi. Kirkin (TUR) d. [10] Saketh Myneni (IND) 36 75 64
[12] Cem Ilkel (TUR) d [Alt] Vinayak. Kaza (IND) 62 61
[13] Ivan Nedelko (RUS) d. [WC] Dhruv Sunish (IND) 63 57 62
[14] Tim Van Rijthoven (NED) bt Dalwinder Singh (IND) 63 61
[15] Brydan Klein (GBR) d. Sidharth Rawat (IND) 61 36 64
Men’s Doubles – First Round
[2] T. Matsui (JPN) / V. Vardhan (IND) d R. Noguchi (JPN) / Y. Takahashi (JPN) 63 63
[3] A. Kadhe (IND) / S. Myneni (IND) d D. Kalenichenko (UKR) / D. Pichler (AUT) 63 36 10-5
A. Chandrasekar (IND) / N. Kaliyanda Poonacha (IND) d S. Rawat (IND) / M. Sureshkumar (IND) 75 63
Photos from Ramkumar Ramanathan’s match
