Day two of this year’s Aircel ATP Chennai Open began on a noisy note as constant murmurs from the crowd provided an irritating background to the first round clash between Matthias Bachinger and Yen-Hsun Lu on Court One.
Except the loud line-calls which interrupted the fans, nothing else succeeded in quietening the chatter. It took the reach of the Centre Court’s PA system to finally bring peace and quiet to Court One; the announcement of Prakash Amritraj’s arrival in the main arena saw a large number of fans instantly made their way to the exit gate of the outside courts.
A dramatic passage
The match on Court Two between Blaz Kavcic and Roberto Bautista-Agut generated controversy in the first set when a ball boy changed the scoreboard while the latter was preparing to serve on a break point. Kavcic had already been awarded that game by the chair umpire and the score erroneously read 2-1 in his favour. The umpire, presciently as it turned out, allowed the score to remain and Bautista-Agut went on to lose the point and the game.
There was more drama as the umpire penalised Kavcic for time violation by taking away his first serve for a point in the following game. Bautista-Agut seemed to think he had been awarded the point. With the clarification taking time, the umpire just called a ‘let’ and Kavcic’s first serve was restored.
‘Sijs’ takes it hard
Dutchman Robin Haase was in attendance for compatriot Igor Sijsling’s match against Cedrik-Marcel Stebe. Despite the occasional shouts of “C’mon Sijs” by Haase, Sijsling produced an insipid performance.
‘Sijs’ was visibly distraught after the defeat and brusquely refused grant a young fan an autograph.
Who’s ‘Rendy’?
A member of Yen-Hsun Lu’s support staff caught the attention of some as he constantly referred to the Taiwanese player by the name “Rendy”.
Turned out that Lu had nicknamed himself so in school since a teacher used to struggle to pronounce his first name!
