The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Indian challenge ends

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 24, 2006

Sport

Sport - Tennis

Indian challenge ends

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: It was a rare occurrence at home that was tough to digest. The Indian challenge in both singles and doubles was wiped out even before the Doordarshan cameras could be positioned for `live' coverage in the ITF Satellite tennis circuit first leg at the DLTA Complex here on Thursday.

Barring the honourable exception of fourth-seeded Vishaal Uppal, who had to concede his quarterfinal match against Korean qualifier Hyun-Woo Nam after just one game following an upset stomach and fever, the rest of the three Indians were unable to win 10 games between them in the quarterfinals.

Of course, wild card J. Vishnu Vardhan — a trainee of C. V. Nagaraj — emphasised his potential yet again even in defeat as he tackled qualifier Sarvar Ikramov of Uzbekistan with competence.

Brimming with confidence

Ikramov, it may be recalled, was brimming with confidence as he had shown the door to Sanam Singh who had won a Futures title recently, apart from dumping out the top-seeded Alexey Kedriouk of Kazakhstan in the earlier rounds.

It was a case of missed chances for the 18-year-old Vishnu who had tuned his game following a brief stint with former Davis Cupper and current national selector S.P. Mishra back home in Hyderabad. Once he got broken after leading 40-0 in the fifth game of the first set, Vishnu was just trying to play catch up with the crafty Uzbek.

Into the second set, Vishnu dropped serve rather tamely in the first and third games, and failed to capitalise on the breakpoints in the sixth and eighth games. He did fire seven aces, but it was his serve that let him down on Thursday.

In the other quarterfinals, second-seeded Herbert Wiltschnig of Austria outplayed Vinod Sridhar, losing just one game in the process.

The results:

Singles (quarterfinals): Sarvar Ikramov (Uzb) bt J. Vishnu Vardhan 6-4, 6-2; Hyun-Woo Nam (Kor) bt Vishaal Uppal 1-0 (retd); Julien Maes (Fra) bt Navdeep Singh 6-1, 6-1; Herbert Wiltschnig (Aut) bt Vinod Sridhar 6-0, 6-1.

Doubles (semifinals): Murad Inoyatov (Uzb) and Alexey Kedriouk (Kaz) bt Tushar Liberhan and Navdeep Singh 6-4, 6-1; Hyung-Tae Kwon and Hyun-Woo Nam (Kor) bt Vivek Shokeen and Sanam Singh 6-4, 6-7(4), 7-5.

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