The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Mankad turns the tables on Navdeep

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Thursday, Mar 20, 2008
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Mankad turns the tables on Navdeep

MUMBAI: Harsh Mankad, forced to re-work his plan after losing the first set to Navdeep Singh, banked on his experience of playing the big points well to turn the tables on the third seed. The 28-year-old, playing on familiar territory at the Ranade Tennis Centre hard court, won 6-7(4), 7-5, 6-2 in three hours, 18 minutes in the $10,000 ITF men’s Futures singles second round. Sri Lankan Harshana Godamanne is the Indian’s next rival.

Purav Raja asserted his authority over Japan’s Katsushi Fukuda for a straight-set victory and an entry into the quarterfinals.

A wildcard entry into the main draw and working hard to inch closer to his career best ranking of 222 after recovering from a knee injury, Harsh was broken in the first game and trailed Navdeep till the ninth before breaking back at 5-5. The tie-breaker saw the latter win the first set after 86 minutes of court action, wresting three points in a row at 4-4.

Both players slugged it out in the second, Mankad getting his act together but unable to dictate terms against the third seed till the 11th game. He went 6-5 up with the help of a break and then served out the set.

The results: Singles (pre-quarterfinals): Harshana Godamanne (SL) bt Vijayant Malik 6-2, 6-2; Harsh Mankad bt Navdeep Singh 6-7(4), 7-5, 6-2; Nathan Thompson (US) bt Ranjeet Virali-Murugesan 6-0, 6-1; Vaja Uzakov (Uzb) bt Rifat Biktyakov (Uzb) 6-7(4), 6-3, 6-0; Purav Raja bt Katsushi Fukuda (Jpn) 6-2, 6-4; Divij Sharan bt Rohan Gajjar 7-6(3), 6-4; Hyun-Woo Nam (Korea) bt Kirati Siributwong (Tha) 6-0, 6-3; Ryan Young (US) bt John McGahon (Ire) 6-3, 6-4.

Doubles (quarterfinals): Mankad / Ranjeet V.M. bt Vijay Kannan / Vinod Sridhar 6-3, 6-4; Rupesh Roy / Vivek Shokeen bt Godamanne / Siributwong 5-7, 6-3, 10-7; Gajjar / Raja bt D. Sharan / Vishnu Vardhan 7-6(2), 7-6(6).

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