New Delhi: The ITF Men Futures Tennis Tournament started on quite a predictable note as the No.1 seed Junn Mitsuashi from Japan had an easy outing against Ramkumar Ramanathan of India at the RK Khanna Tennis Stadium, New Delhi on Monday.
The Japanese went on to beat the Indian rival in straight sets with a score line of 6-2,6-4 at the court No 1.
But that was not the case in court No.6 where Kelta Koyama of Japan making his first appearance in main draw lost to a seasoned Indian player N.Sriram Balaji. The experienced Indian hardly lost a sweat and outplayed his Japanese opponent 6-0, 6-0.
Meanwhile the action at court No.1 continued as the Vignesh Peranamullur had a tough time against the big serving sixth seed Austrian Nikolaus Moser. The Austrian player displayed far superior performance in all departments of the game and won the match 6-4, 6-2.
With each match turning out on Monday as expected, in came the thriller as the first seed doubles pair of Vishnu Vardhan and Karan Rastogi were stunned in the very first set of the match. The unseeded pair of Ranjeet Virali Murugesan and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan displayed some quality stroke play to clinch the first set 7-5.
But the number one seed made a strong comeback as they went on to break unseeded pair just at the right time to take the second set 6-4.This stretched the match to the third and final set. In this set each point was fought hard as both pairs matched each other serve after serve and return after return. Finally the match was stretched to a super tie-breaker and the number 1 seed pair of Vishnu Vardhan and Karan Rastogi with all their power, aggressive ground strokes and experience won the first round match 5-7,6-4,10-7.
Results:
Singles (first round): Junn Mitsuhashi (Jpn) bt R. Ramkumar 6-2, 6-4; James Marsalek (GBR) bt Ivan Arenas-Gualda (Esp) 5-7, 6-3, 6-1; Abhijeet Tiwari bt Kaza Vinayak Sharma 6-3, 7-5; Richard Becker (Ger) bt Lakshit Sood 6-3, 6-3; Nikolaus Moser (Aut) bt P.C. Vignesh 6-4, 6-2.
N. Sriram Balaji bt Keita Koyama (Jpn) 6-0, 6-0; Weerapat Doakmaiklee (Tha) bt Sunil Kumar 6-4, 6-4; Kunal Anand bt Saurabh Singh 6-2, 7-6(5).
Doubles (pre-quarterfinals): Karan Rastogi & Vishnu Vardhan bt Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan & V.M. Ranjeet 5-7, 6-4, 10-7; Mohit Mayur & Saketh Myneni bt Saurabh Patil & V. Vignesh 6-0, 6-2.
Alexander Satschko (Ger) & Rohan Gajjar bt Keita Koyama (Jpn) & Mate Pavic (Cro) 6-1, 7-5; Weerapat Doakmaiklee & Kirati Siributwong (Tha) bt Kaza Vinayak Sharma & Vivek Shokeen 7-6(5), 6-4.
By Vivek Prabhakar Singh
Indian Sports News