Chennai, July 30 (IANS) Kaza Vinayak Sharma ousted higher ranked fellow-Indian Ashwin Vijayraghavan 6-2, 4-6, 6-4 in the first round of the Dr KCG Verghese-GNC ITF Futures men’s tennis tournament here Monday after a two-hour 40-minute battle.
Both players were rooted to the baseline for most of the match, trading aggressive ground strokes. Sharma got off to a good start as he broke a tentative Vijayaraghavan twice in the fourth and eighth game to take the first set 6-2.
In the second set, after having his serve broken in the second game to be down 0-2, Vijayaraghavan showed more composure and consistency. He began to assert himself and ran Sharma corner to corner to break in the third and fifth games to clinch the set 6-4.
In the decider, Sharma displayed fluent side to side movement and retrieved with great tenacity. Games went to serves until the ninth before Sharma broke Vijayaraghavan and clinched the issue on the fifth match point.
In another match, Siddarth Rawat played aggressively, approaching the net at every opportunity to put out Zach Itzstein of Australia in three sets.
The results (prefix denotes seedings; Indian unless mentioned):
Singles (first round): Sidharth Rawat bt Zach Itzstein (AUS) 6-4, 3-6, 6-3; Elbert Sie (INA) bt Vignesh Peranamallur 6-2, 6-1; 4-Antoine Escoffier (FRA) bt Chinmay Pradhan 6-0, 6-1; Yang Lu (CHN) bt Kumara P Saradhi Adavelly 6-2, 6-1; Kaza Vinayak Sharma bt Ashwin Vijayaraghavan 6-2, 4-6, 6-4; 2-Ranjeet Virali Murugesan bt Arun-Prakash Rajagopalan 6-1, 6-4; 6-N Vijay Sundar Prashanth bt Abhijeet Tiwari 6-1, 6-3.
Doubles (first round): 1-Weerapat Doakmaiklee (THA) / Perakiat Siriluethaiwattana (THA) bt Aditya Hari Sasongko (INA) / Elbert Sie (INA) 6-2, 6-3; Chih-Jen Ho (TPE) / Yang Lu (CHN) w/o Hyun-Woo Nam (KOR) / Seong-Gook Oh (KOR); Antoine Escoffier (FRA) / Bastien Favier (FRA) bt Kunal Anand / Ajai Selvaraj 6-2, 6-4; Tejas Chaukulkar / Arjun Kadhe bt Kuan-I Lee (TPE) /Jui Mao (TPE) 6-4, 3-6 (10-7).
