The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Rushmi powers her way into semifinals

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Friday, May 19, 2006

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Sport - Tennis

Rushmi powers her way into semifinals

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Sandhya Nagaraj exposed her immaturity at the crunch even as the top-seeded Rushmi Chakravarthi emphasised her experience in the quarterfinals of the $10,000 ITF women's tennis tournament at the DLTA Complex here on Thursday.

Serving well and stroking with authority as she has always done, Rushmi showed the urgency in the climax to emerge a 6-2, 3-6, 6-4 winner, a big relief for her after having lost tamely in the second round last week.

The runner-up of the tournament last week, the 17-year-old Sandhya was playing close to her best till she lost track at 4-3, 30-0 in the decider. Sandhya went for an injudicious backhand drop at 30-30 in that game and managed to win only two more points in the rest of the match.

To her credit, Rushmi grabbed the opportunity and cracked four winners in the ninth game and Sandhya buried a couple of overheads into the net in hastening to defeat in the tenth game.

That costly blemish of being unable to provide a good finish apart, Sandhya played a good match as she bounced back on losing the first set and being a break down in the second.

In the semifinals, Rushmi will meet the champion of the last tournament, the fourth-seeded Zhao Yi-Jing of China who spiked a late flourish by Sonal Phadke to be home in straight sets.

Sonal had a chance to go up 4-2 in the second set, but found the Chinese left-hander pretty strong, though Zhao was literally dragging herself on the court owing to injuries.

National junior champion Poojashree Venkatesh showed considerable maturity in outwitting Archana Venkataraman in straight sets. The 15-year-old Poojashree's qualitative development in recent months will be put to a test of fire on Friday when she takes on the second-seeded Song Shan-Shan. The petite Chinese girl proved too good for Geeta Manohar though the Andhra girl played very well, and deserved more than the two games that she managed to eke out.

The results:

Singles (quarterfinals): Rushmi Chakravarthi bt Sandhya Nagaraj 6-2, 3-6, 6-4; Zhao Yi-Jing (Chn) bt Sonal Phadke 6-0, 6-3; Poojashree Venkatesh bt Archana Venkataraman 6-3, 6-4; Song Shan-Shan (Chn) bt Geeta Manohar 6-2, 6-0.

Doubles (semifinals): Song Shan-Shan and Zhao Yi-Jing (Chn) bt Tegan Edwards (RSA) and Sonal Phadke 6-2, 6-2; Rushmi Chakravarthi and Archana Venkataraman bt Vishika Chhetri and Sandri Gangothri 7-6 (5), 6-4.

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