Davangere: All the seeded players advanced to the men’s singles pre-quarterfinals of the ITF Davangere Open Men’s World Tennis Tour, raising the expectations of an exciting contest ahead in the US $ 15,000 event.
Leading the march of the seeds at the District Tennis Association, Davangere courts here on Wednesday was top seed Nick Chappell of USA who quelled the challenge of wild card entrant Ranjeet Virali-Murugesan after a hard-fought first set 7-6 (3), 6-0.
Second-seeded Bogdan Bobrav got a rude awakening when qualifier Tushar Madan took the first set under his nose 4-6. However, the lanky player set things right for himself and took the second set comfortably 6-2 and the third one even easier at 6-0.
The highest-seeded Indian, third-seeded Digvijay Pratap Singh had to dig deep to overcome qualifier Rohan Mehra in a thrilling three-setter 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 while fourth seed Florent Bax of France registered an easy 6-1, 6-2 victory over another wild card Ajay Malik.
However, the most interesting match of the day was between the winner of ITF Dharwad Ramkumar Ramanathan and Ishaque Eqbal which lasted for 2 hours and 32 minutes. The latter put up a spirited display of tennis and broke Ramkumar’s service in the fourth game to go 3-1 up.
Ramkumar restored parity by the sixth game after which both opponents held their respective serve for the set to be decided via tie-breaker which Ramkumar won 7-4.
The second set saw both the players break each other’s service once before the youngster took a 4-2 lead but could not hold on to the advantage, thanks to many unforced errors and a couple of good passing shots by the Davis Cupper who won the next three games to take a slender 5-4 lead and later broke Ishaque’s serve in the 12th game to take the set.
The third set saw Ishaque taking a 2-0 advantage but soon was down 2-3. With a couple of line calls going against him, Ramkumar’s vociferous comments on the court shook his opponent’s confidence as he took the decider 6-3 to enter the last 16.
–IANS