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Top seeds justify their billing

Sports Reporter

Gojowczyk had his sights trained on a fifth crown
Chen dished out two surprise underhand serves

CHENNAI: Justifying their on-paper billing, the top four seeds at the ongoing ITF-Futures tournament breezed into the semifinals on Thursday without dropping a set. The surge of the seeds at Gandhinagar Club here also signalled the end of the Indian challenge in the tournament as both V.M. Ranjeet and P.C. Vignesh sank without a gurgle of protest.

Top seed Peter Gojowczyk’s mauling of Ranjeet on Court-2 accentuated the chasm between the players from Europe and those from the sub-continent. The winner of four Futures titles, Gojowczyk had his sights trained unwaveringly on a fifth crown in Chennai as he broke Ranjeet twice to win the first set 6-3 and then scampered to a 3-1 lead in the second.

Four consecutive aces

In the fifth game he pounded four consecutive aces to make it 4-1 and then broke Ranjeet once again before serving out the match.

The other Indian, Vignesh, was unfortunate enough to run into the second-seeded Kazakh Alexey Kedryuk in another quarterfinal. Kedryuk ran away to a 5-0 lead in the first set and set the tone for the remainder of the match. The next set was hallmarked by two breaks of the Vignesh serve to put an end to Indian participation in the tournament.

Other quarterfinal entertainment included Chinese Taipei’s I-Ta Chen yearning to grunt his way out of trouble against Korean Hyun-Woo Nam.

Forsaking the first set 5-7 to Nam, Chen pitched his decibel levels to such an intensity that players from the adjacent court had to request the umpire to ask him to tone down.

Underhand serves

Ever-experimental and desperate for victory, Chen even dished out two surprise underhand serves that, astonishingly, his opponent was unable to get a racket to — vicious under-spin causing the ball to nip back as soon as it landed in Nam’s side of the court. Subterfuge and sound-harassment, though, failed to net Chen the desired result as he went down fighting in two close sets.

The results: Thursday’s matches: Singles quarterfinals: Peter Gojowczyk (Ger) bt V.M. Ranjeet 6-3, 6-1; Yuzchi Sugita (Jpn) bt Hsin-Han Lee (Tpe) 7-6(8), 6-1; Hyun-Woo Nam (Kor) bt I-Ta Chen (Tpe) 7-5, 6-4; Alexey Kedryuk (Kaz) bt P.C. Vignesh 6-1, 6-3.

Doubles semifinals: Divij Sharan & Vishnu Vardhan bt Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan & Aqeel Khan (Pak) 6-3, 6-4; Ashuthosh Singh & Sunil Kumar bt Peter Gojowczyk & Yuichi Sugita 6-1, 6-4.

Wednesday’s matches: Singles second round: Hyun-Woo Nam bt Aqeel Khan 6-4, 6-4; Hsin-Han Lee (Tpe) bt Rupesh Roy 6-3, 7-6(1); V.M. Ranjeet bt Vinod Sridhar 6-2, 6-3; Peter Gojowczyk bt Divij Sharan 6-2, 7-5; Alexey Kedryuk bt Vishnu Vardhan 6-1, 6-7(3),7-6(5); I-Ta Chen bt Mithun Murali 6-4, 6-1; P.C. Vignesh bt Rohan Gajjar 6-2, 6-4; Yuichi Sugita bt Karunuday Singh 6-4, 6-4.

Doubles quarterfinals: Peter Gojowczyk & Yuichi Sugita bt Christopher Marquis & Abhijeet 6-4, 6-2; Divij Sharan & Vishnu Vardhan bt Rupesh Roy & Alexey Kedryuk 2-6, 6-3, 11-9; Aqeel Khan & Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan bt V.M. Ranjeet & N. Vijay Sundar Prasanth 5-7, 7-5, 10-7; Ashutosh Singh & Sunil Kumar Sipaeya bt I-Ta Chen & Hsin-Han Lee 7-6(2), 6-3.

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