The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Mathew continues good work

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 14, 2004

Sport

Sport - Tennis

Mathew continues good work

By Kamesh Srinivasan

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 13. Jaco T. Mathew continued his good work and beat Ashutosh Singh 6-7(3), 6-3, 6-4 in the first round of the Indian Oil $10,000 ITF men's Futures tennis tournament at the DLTA Complex here on Monday.

On a day when the atmosphere was quite warm, Ashutosh was unable to maintain the fire in his big serves, and it was the fighting qualities of Jaco Mathew that stood out in the end, in a battle that lasted two hours and 28 minutes.

The 20-year-old Mathew had beaten Mustafa Ghouse in the first round last week in Hyderabad, and played with renewed confidence despite losing the first set. He needed a medical break and was treated for cramps, but bounced with energy in the climax. Mathew will play the winner of the match between the eighth-seeded Ajay Ramaswami and Gurmehar Singh.

Ashutosh has been looking for the good results for some time, to do justice to his improved game. He did not have much to speak for from the Pakistan Satellite circuit, but had a good first round against Vijay Kannan in Hyderabad, losing 9-11 in the third set tie-break. He served 10 aces this day, but was clearly tired by the third set, and was unable to recover after conceding a break.

In another interesting duel, local wild card Vivek Shokeen put up a good fight before going down in three sets to Toshiaki Sakai of Japan. The 17-year-old Shokeen has had a good run in the recent Pakistan Satellite circuit when he made a semifinal as a qualifier apart from two quarterfinals. With a little more of self-belief Shokeen could have pulled it off this day against the crafty left-hander in a lively base-line battle.

The results:

Singles (first round): Toshiaki Sakai (Jpn) bt Vivek Shokeen 6-3, 5-7, 6-4; Hiu-Tung Yu (Hkg) bt Kai-Lung Chang (Tpe) 6-3, 6-4; Jaco Mathew bt Ashutosh Singh 6-7 (3-7), 6-3, 6-4.

Doubles (pre-quarterfinals): Mustafa Ghouse and Vishaal Uppal bt Aditya Madkekar and Narendran Ranganathan 7-5, 6-3; Kamala Kannan and Pathanjali Ravishankar bt Shivang Mishra and Vivek Shokeen 7-6 (7-4), 6-3; Ashutosh Singh and Gurmehar Singh bt Hiu-Tung Yu (Hkg) and Anjan Viplav 3-6, 6-2, 6-3; Rupesh Roy and Sanam Singh bt Adam Jaya and Mohammed Noordin (Mas) 6-3, 3-6, 7-5; Kai-Lung Chang and Wang-Cheng Hsieh (Tpe) bt Siddharth Gulati and Yannick Nelord 6-2, 6-1; Jaco Mathew and Vinod Sridhar bt Arindam Dutta and Punna Vishal 6-4, 6-4; Yew-MingSi (Mas) and Takeshi Itoh (Jpn) bt Aqeel Khan (Pak) and Vijay Kannan 6-7 (6-8), 6-4, 6-3; Ajay Ramaswami and Sunil Kumar bt Chris Kwon (US) and Tai-Wei Liu (Tpe) 4-6, 6-2, 6-3.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport