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Saturday, May 17, 2008
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Ebelthite and Groth win title

Special Correspondent

New Delhi: Colin Ebelthite and Samuel Groth of Australia combined nicely to pip Mohammed Al Ghareeb of Kuwait and Ilia Marchenko of Ukraine 2-6, 7-6(5), 10-8 in an entertaining doubles final of the SAIL Open $50,000 Challenger tennis tournament at the DLTA Complex here on Friday.

It was a remarkable recovery by the Aussie duo, which had earlier in the day knocked out Prakash Amritraj and Rajeev Ram in the semifinals, as it fought hard in the second set and converted its eighth setpoint to force the match tie-break.

After Ebelthite and Groth had dropped serve in the third and fifth games of the first set, the Aussies stepped up their game to break Marchenko in the fourth game of the second set, in an attempt to turn the tide.

However, the advantage was lost immediately as Groth got broken in the next game. It was a thrilling fare thereafter as Ghareeb and Marchenko saved setpoints in the tenth and 12th games and three more in the tie-break.

It was Groth who put the finishing touch to the set with a neat backhand volley, and the tall Aussie had shown his high levels of energy at 4-2 in the tie-break by making a standing jump over the net, on losing a point.

In the super tie-break, Ghareeb and Marchenko took a 5-2 lead, but the Kuwaiti was unable to consolidate on the situation as he failed to win a point on his two serves. Eventually, Groth came up with a crisp volley on matchpoint to seal a well-deserved victory.

The title was worth 55 ATP points and $3100 for the Aussies who had broken Rajeev Ram in the seventh game of the first set and the first game of the second to to record a straight forward finish earlier in the semifinals against the Indo-US combination.

The singles semifinals in the morning had also proved anti-climactic as the top-seeded Yen-Hsun Lu of Chinese Taipei and the seventh-seeded Brendan Evans of the U.S. cruised through without facing much resistance.

Lu was too good for the fourth-seeded Go Soeda as he put his compact game on display in dismissing the Japanese with ease, breaking him in the sixth game of the first set and at will three times in the second.

In the other semifinals, Kristian Pless of Denmark conceded at 30-40 on his serve in the second game in a match that lasted six minutes.

The results: Singles: Semifinals: Yen-Hsun Lu (Tpe) bt Go Soeda (Jpn) 6-3, 6-1; Brendan Evans (US) bt Kristian Pless (Den) 1-0 (retd.)

Doubles: Final: Colin Ebelthite & Samuel Groth bt Mohammed Al Ghareeb (Kuw) & Ilia Marchenko (Ukr) 2-6, 7-6(5), 10-8; Semifinals: Ebelthite & Groth bt Rajeev Ram (US) & Prakash Amritraj 6-4, 6-4.

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