Indian Tennis Roundup: Bhambri enters quarters in Vietnam, Paes-Raja advance in France

From the ATP Challenger to the ITF Circuit, here’s a roundup of the results involving Indian tennis players in action this week.

Vietnam Open

Indian players had a mixed outing at the Challenger tournament in Ho Chi Minh City.

Yuki Bhambri, who is seeded fourth, notched a strong 6-3, 6-1 win over Taiwan’s Ti Chen to reach the quarterfinals. In a match that lasted almost 90 minutes, Bhambri won 76% points on first serve and fired four aces to advance to the last eight. The Indian had earlier beaten Jose Statham with an equally comfortable margin of 6-1, 6-4 in the first round o the tournament.

Prajnesh Gunneswaran also advanced to the second round beating Marc Polmans of Australia 6-4, 6-2 in a 79-minute long match. The unseeded Indian was strong on serve, winning 62% of his service points in the straight sets win.

However, three Indians were on the losing end in the singles draw.

Sumit Nagal went down to second seed Mikhail Youzhny of Russia in a tightly contest match. The Indian lost the three-setter 1-6 , 7-6(5), 4-6 in his opener, putting in a strong performance in the second set tiebreaker after being ‘breadsticked’ in the first.

Another Indian, N Vijay Sundar Prashanth, was up against the top seed Taylor Fritz in the first round. The American won the match 6-2, 6-4.

Earlier, Saketh Myneni, who had entered the Ho Chin Min City Challenger using a protected ranking, lost to Australia’s Akita Santillan 6-4, 6-2. However, there was a silver lining for Myneni in the doubles as he and his partner Prashanth knocked out Santillan and Peter Polansky. The all-Indian pair beat the fourth seeds 6-7(4), 6-2, 10-8 in a stiff contest to enter the quarterfinals.

Suzhou Challenger

At the China International in Suzhou, all three Indians in the fray went down in the first round of the singles, with two of them facing top seeds in the opener.

N Sriram Balaji lost 2-6, 4-6 to second seed Blaz Kavcic of Slovenia while Vishnu Vardhan was beaten faced a disheartening 6-1, 6-1 defeat to third seed Moldavian Radu Albot.

Sidharth Rawat, who had made his way into the draw through qualifying, lost 6-3, 6-3 to China’s Zhizhen Zhang.

In the doubles, second seeds Vishnu Vardhan and N Sriram Balaji were stunned in the first round. Italy’s Lorenzo Frigerio and Dutch Miliaan Niesten inflicted a heavy 6-2, 6-1 loss on the Indian pair.

Brest Challenger

Leander Paes and Purav Raja made a winning start at the Open Brest Arena Credit Agricole in France. The third seeded Indian pair beat wildcard entrants Geoffrey Blancaneaux and Constant Lestienne of France 6-2, 6-4 to enter the quarterfinals. Divij Sharan is also participating in doubles draw there with Scott Clayton. There are no Indians in the singles draw.

Traralgon Challenger

At the Latrobe City Traralgon Challenger in Australia, the sole Indian in the fray, Sasi Mukund, was out in the first round. He battled in a three-setter but lost to higher ranked local Alex Bolt 7-5, 5-7, 4-6.

Liuzhou

On the ITF Women’s Circuit, India’s Ankita Raina was in action at the $60,000 Liuzhou tournament in China. In the singles, she lost to Russia’s Olesya Pervushina 6-4, 6-1. But in doubles, seeded fourth with Dalila Jakupović of Slovenia, she advanced with a 6-2, 6-7(5), 10-3 over China’s Xu Liu Sun and Ziyue Sun