Antoine Escoffier is no stranger to India having visited the country on a few occasions. In fact, the Frenchman said he loves India and its players.
The 25-year-old, however, did no favours to India’s Sumit Nagal, the fifth seed, handing him a 6-3, 6-3 defeat in the first round of the Chennai Open ATP Challenger tennis championships at the SDAT-Nungambakkam Stadium here on Monday.
It was a day when none of the Indians who took on a foreigner could escape defeat.
Sriram Balaji bowed out to qualifier Wishaya Trongcharoenchaikul of Thailand, Sasi Kumar Mukund was beaten by Spain’s Gerard Granollers, and Lucas Catarina of Monaco thrashed wild-card entrant Nitin Kumar Sinha. Differently abled (deaf) Duckhee Lee, the third seed, raced past Vijay Sundar Prashanth, another wild-card.
Escoffier was very effective against Nagal, ranked 152 places above the Frenchman. Nagal, an aggressive player, just didn’t have the consistency of his opponent.
The Indian did come up with some fantastic winners from the backcourt, but Escoffier played the big points with conviction, and served quite a few aces at critical junctures on his second serve.
Earlier, qualifier Arjun Kadhe defeated Saketh Myneni 6-7(5), 6-3, 6-4 in another first-round contest. Myneni was bothered by pain on his right elbow and he even took a medical time out in the third game of the third set.
The results (first round, Indians unless mentioned):
Singles: Arjun Kadhe bt Saketh Myneni 6-7(5), 6-3, 6-4; Wishaya Trongcharoenchaikul (Tha) bt Sriram Balaji 6-4, 3-6, 7-5; Gerard Granollers (Esp) bt Sasi Kumar Mukund 6-3, 6-2; Duckhee Lee (Kor) bt Vijay Sundar Prashanth 6-3, 6-4; Sidharth Rawat bt S. Dhakshineswar 6-2, 6-0; Mohamed Safwat (Egy) bt Alessandro Bega (Ita) 6-4, 6-3; Antoine Escoffier (Fra) bt Sumit Nagal 6-3, 6-3; Lucas Catarina (Mon) bt Nitin Kumar Sinha 6-3, 6-4.
Doubles: Sanchai Ratiwatana & Sonchat Ratiwatana bt Chandril Sood & Lakshit Sood 6-0, 6-3; Sriram Balaji & Vishnu Vardhan bt Dmitry Popko (Kaz) & Bernabe Zapata Miralles (Esp) 7-6(8), 6-1.
Luca Margaroli (Sui) & Saketh Myneni bt Adil Kalyanpur & Sasi Kumar Mukund 6-4, 6-3.
