The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Watch out for Ancic and Berdych

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 25, 2006
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Watch out for Ancic and Berdych

Kamesh Srinivasan

MUMBAI: The $380,000 Kingfisher Airlines tennis Open starting here on Monday at the CCI courts will see a couple of tall men — measuring an identical 6' 5'' — queue up behind the top seed Tommy Robredo of Spain for the top honours.

Ancic and Berdych may prove more than a handful to quite a few. Ancic, especially, is on top of his serve and volley game. On his return from injury — which saw him sit the U.S. Open out, he reached the singles final and won the doubles title with Mahesh Bhupathi at Beijing last week. Berdych is enjoying the best ranking of his career (No. 13) and would be keen to break into the top 10.

Bopanna hopeful

After reaching the final of a Challenger at Bukhara at Uzbekistan as a qualifier recently, Rohan Bopanna has been training religiously for this event.

``I have been practising here for the last few days. Wesley Moodie is a tough (first-round) opponent but I hope to play well,'' said Bopanna. Another wild card Karan Rastogi will be up against the sixth seed Bjorn Phau. "I have been training at the CCI for a week, and am feeling good. Phau is a baseliner like me and I look forward to an interesting match,'' said the 19-year-old.

It is tough to digest the fact that seven of the top 10 Indian players did not bother to reach here. That is perhaps one major reason why the 16-year-old Akash Wagh, the national junior champion has been given a wild card into the main draw.

The seedings: 1. Tommy Robredo (Esp), 2. Mario Ancic (Cro), 3. Tomas Berdych (Cze), 4. Dmitry Tursunov (Rus), 5. Carlos Moya (Esp), 6. Bjorn Phau (Ger), 7. Juan Monaco (Arg), 8. Wesley Moodie (RSA).

The results (third and final qualifying round): Gouichi Motomura (Jpn) bt Sanam Singh 7-6(4), 6-2; James Auckland (GBR) bt Aditya Madkekar 6-2, 6-4. Frank Moser (Ger) bt Mustafa Ghouse 7-6(3), 7-6(9). Second round: Gouichi Motomura bt Yin Xiao Long (Chn) 6-2, 6-2; Sanam Singh w/o Christopher Marquis; James Auckland (GBR) bt Purav Raja 6-3, 6-4; Aditya Madkekar bt Nishank Mishra 6-1, 6-3; Frank Moser (Ger) bt Rahil Makharia 6-1, 6-0; Mustafa Ghouse bt Vishnu Vardhan 6-0, 3-6, 6-3; Martijn Van Haasteren (Ned) bt Shivang Mishra 6-2, 6-2; Jasper Smit (Ned) bt Arjun Goutham 6-4, 6-7(8), 6-1.

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