It was a good weekend for Indian tennis players with as many as three titles. After Saketh Myneni won a Futures title in Uzbekistan on Saturday, Prajnesh Gunneswaran lifted his first ATP Challenger title at the Kunming Open on Sunday.
The 28-year-old came from a set down to win the biggest ATP title of his career, beating Egypt’s Mohamed Safwat 5-7, 6-3, 6-1 on the clay court at Anning, China. The $150,000 title also guaranteed him a spot in the French Open qualifiers as his ranking will go up in the 170s. Earlier, he had notched another comeback win to beat world No 230 Kamil Majchrzak 0-6, 6-3, 6-1 in the semi-final. In the quarter-final, he knocked out eight seed Kwon Soon-woo from South Korea 6-2, 6-3.
Prajnesh will take a few weeks off to appear in exams and will again start playing closer to the French Open.
The field at Anning included India’s Ramkumar Ramanathan, Vasek Pospsil, Evgeny Donskoy and Jared Thompson.
Ramkumar is currently playing the qualifiers for the Istanbul Open and is seeded first. He beat Aldin Šetkić 6-4, 6-3 in the first round and will play the second today.
In Uzbekistan, Myneni clinched the $25,000 ITF Futures title with a 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (4) win over Belarussian seventh seed Yaraslav Shyla. On the hard courts at Karshi, he staged a comeback to win his 10th Futures title. In the semi-final, he had notched a hard-fought 6-7(3), 7-6(5), 6-3 win over Jurabek Karimov after getting a walkover over Russian fourth seed Evgeny Tyurnev in the quarters.
In the doubles, Arjun Kadhe lifted the ITF $25K(+H) Futures trophy in Nigeria with American partner Ronnie Schneider. The duo beat Danylo Kalenichenko and Mirko Martinez 6-2, 6-3.
Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan finished as the runner-up with partner López-Pérez in the Tallahassee Tennis Challenger.
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