Teenager Ramkumar Ramanathan entered his first ITF Futures final with a hard-fought win against Torsten Wietoska in the $10,000 Dharwad Open tennis tournament at Dharwad on Friday.
The 18-year-old Indian will face second-seeded Sanam Singh in the final.
Wietoska loses
Germany’s Wietoska, who upset top-seeded Sriram Balaji in the quarterfinals on Thursday, stretched the Tamil Nadu youngster in the first set, forcing a tie-break despite facing break points in the ninth and 11th games.
Ramanathan kept his cool in the tie-break to go one set up.
In the second set, the Indian edged ahead at 6-5, and wrapped up the match breaking the German’s serve in the 12th game.
In the other semifinal, Davis Cupper Sanam breezed past V.M. Ranjeet, dropping just a game.
The results:
Singles (semifinals): Sanam Singh bt V.M. Ranjeet 6-1, 6-0; Ramkumar Ramanathan bt Torsten Wietoska (Ger) 7-6(3), 7-5.
Doubles (final): Amrit Narasimhan & Michael Shabaz (USA) bt Ajai Selvaraj & Ashwin Vijayraghavan 6-4, 3-6, 10-7.
Keywords: ITF Futures
