Mandya (Karnataka), May 22 (IANS) Top seed Antoine Escoffier from France and No.3 Karunuday Singh entered the singles final of the Men’s ITF Futures Mandya Open tennis tournament with contrasting victories here on Friday.
Escoffier accounted for eighth seed and Davis Cupper Vishnu Vardhan 6-4, 7-6 (4) while Karunuday battled past Ronit Singh Bist 6-7(6), 6-2, 7-6(5) in the semi-finals.
Escoffier had it rather easy with Vardhan rushing far too many times, allowing the top seed lots of angles to play some pleasing passing shots. The players held serves until the eighth game before Vishnu’s unforced errors enabled Escoffier to earn that one break of serve to win the first set 6-4.
The second set saw the players holding serve although Vardhan did have his chances of breaking the top seed. In the ensuing tie-breaker, Escoffier ran up a 3-0 lead, but Vardhan fought back to level at 4-4 before the Frenchman won three points in a row to seal his place in the final.
In the other semi-finals, Delhi-based Karunuday was sluggish to start with, being broken in the very first game of the first set. However, he managed to level the game at 6-all to force the tie-breaker which his Lucknow opponent Bist clinched, winning two consecutive points with the score reading 6-6 again.
Karunuday got into his groove to decimate Bist in the second set, breaking his serve in the fifth and seventh games to take the set 6-2.
Bist raised the level of his game to ensure he held serve all through to set up another tie-breaker in the decider which he levelled at 5-5. But Karunuday’s experience and better tennis saw Bist bowing out.
The second seeded Indian pair of Anvit Bendre and Akash Wagh, combining for the fifth week in a row, clinched the doubles crown with a 2-6, 6-4, 10-6 victory over Taipei’s Jui-Chen Hung and India’s Sasi Kumar Mukund to claim 18 ATP points and $310 each.