It was not a good day for Indian singles tennis players on the ATP Challenger and International tennis Federation circuit on Wednesday.
India No 1 Ankita Raina, who had beaten Sabine Lisicki in the qualifiers, fell in the first round to wildcard Katy Dunne. She lost 3-6, 3-6 to the player ranked almost 100 places below her, in the first round of grass court ITF Surbiton Trophy in London.
In the corresponding men’s Challenger event, Ramkumar Ramanathan lost to to 15th seed Matthias Bachinger of Germany 6-4, 4-6, 3-6 in the second round. He had earlier beaten Tobias Kamke 6-3, 3-6, 6-1 in the first round .
However, he is still alive in doubles competition as he and partner Kwon Soon-woo beat the all-Indian pairing of Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan and Purav Raja 6-4, 6-3.
Sumit Nagal also went down in the second round of the ATP Challenger Poznan, Poland. He lost to Alessandro Giannessi 5-7, 6-3, 6-3. He had earlier beaten Constant Lestienne 6-3, 5-7, 6-3.
Orlando Luz beat Arjun Kadhe 6-4, 6-4 in the first singles qualifying round at the Challenger at Little Rock, US. The Indian also went down in doubles as Zhe Li and Dudi Sela beat the fourth seeded pair of Kadhe and Volodoymyr Uzhylovskyi 6-2, 7-5 in the first round.
Vishnu Vardhan and his partner Nikola Cacic went down to second seed Denys Molchanov and Igor Zelenay wins hard fought battle 6-2,4-6,10-8 at the Challenger in Prostejov, Czech Republic
Other ITF results
Sidharth Rawat lost to Agustin Velotti 1-6, 4-6 in the first round of the $25,000 ITF event in Hong Kong.
Karunuday Singh beat Harry Thursfield 6-1, 6-2 in the first round of the $15,000 ITF event in Tumon, Guam.
At the $15,000 ITF event in Singapore, Abhinav Sanjeev Shanmugam beat Congsup Congcar 6-4, 6-1; Ryota Tanuma beat Siddhant Banthia 6-2, 4-6, 6-1; Rimpei Kawakami beat Adil Kalyanpur 6-1, 6-3 in the first round of singles.
Jessica Pieri and Lucrezia Stefanini beat top seeds Prarthana Thombare and Elixane Lechemia 6-4, 7-6(7) at the $60K ITF event in Brescia, Italy.
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