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Tennis
Sunil Kumar takes honours
By Our Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI, DEC. 8. He may not be the best junior in Asia, but Sunil Kumar added another feather to his cap by beating Tai-Wei Liu of Chinese Taipei 6-7 (4-7), 7-5, 6-3 in the final of the Asian junior tennis championship at the DLTA Complex here on Saturday.
The 18-year-old Chandigarh lad, who has been training with Paes en Sport in Calcutta for the last two years, survived a matchpoint in the tenth game of the second set, to become the first Indian after Sandeep Kirtane in Brunei in 1991 to win the honour of the Asian junior title. Nitin had finished runner-up the following year in Jaipur.
The 120 ITF junior points may boost Sunil's tally considerably and possibly fetch him his best junior ranking, from the current status of 60, but he will stand to gain more from the psychological boost. Of course, it was not Sunil's fault that some of the leading juniors including Yeu-Tzuoo Wang of Chinese Taipei, ranked fourth in the world, following two finals in junior Grand Slams this season, were not figuring in the tournament.
It was not a match in which Sunil could underline his maturity as a clinical performer on court, but unlike many other talented Indians who lose their way mainly because they get disheartened when the going gets tough, the left-hander clung on to a thin ray of hope to prevail in the end.
Playing a mirror-reflection of himself, errors et al., was indeed a difficult exercise for Sunil, but he slowly found his way into the match in a battle of left-handers that was replete with long rallies, and a few memorable shots.
It was the Taipei lad who looked to have the attitude of a boxer, as he fought hard till he was serving for the match at 5-4 in the second set. However, when it came to serving the knock-out punch, the strongly-built lad wavered momentarily, that was bad enough to open the escape route to glory for Sunil.
The key to the whole match lay in the volley that Sunil came up with, when he faced the matchpoint, and the shot hit the line much to the discomfiture of Liu.
Thereafter, the 16-year-old Taipei lad seemed to have lost confidence in his ability to clinch the issue against the top-seeded Indian, who capitalised on the situation to turn the tide in his favour.
Liu had only four doublefaults in the match, but he landed two of them to face breakpoints in the 10th and 12th games of the second set. It was a dramatic turn-around for Sunil who had dropped serve in the first game, to be down 2-4 at one stage before recovering his ground with a break in the eighth game.
Sunil himself was quite tentative, and committed a double-fault in getting broken in the ninth game after misreading the flight in the previous point. It could have been a costly error, but he survived to revive his fortunes.
In the decider, Liu led 3-2 with a break in the fifth game, but Sunil reeled off the next four games, playing steady from the backcourt. He converted the third matchpoint when Liu's shot sailed wide. It was time to punch the air in celebration.
After the drama of the first set, when Sunil had missed four breakpoints in the opening game and one more in the fifth, it was a relief for the Indian supporters, who packed the stands, to be spared the agony of another tussle in the decider.
Sunil was serving for the first set after a break in the 11th game, but got broken with a doublefault on breakpoint. In the tie-break, he was down 1-4 and compounded his problems with some more loose shots.
In fact, Sunil committed as many 95 errors in the whole match, and 43 of them happened in the first set. He did hit 26 winners, including 15 in the first set, but he soon realised that it was more important to control the mistakes. He had two aces in the match, and both came in the second set.
Liu had 87 errors and 13 winners in the match, apart from two aces and four doublefaults. One of those aces was on the first point in that 10th game, which he could not win eventually in the second set. It was a match in which it was established once again that momentary flourish would not be sufficient to win a two-hour duel.
Chin Wei Chan compensated for the disappointment of Chinese Taipei, by clinching the girls title with a 6-3, 6-4 triumph over the second-seeded Da-Jung Hong of Korea.
Following her doubles triumph the previous day, it was a double for the 16-year-old Taipei girl, who looked the winner from the beginning despite being 1-3 down in both the sets. Having beaten the top-seeded Sania Mirza in the second round, the Korean proved an easy prey for Chan who hit with conviction on either flank.
There was, of course, no compensation for the disappointment of the Doordarshan viewers as the national network beamed the girls final `live', after ignoring the boys final in the morning.
The secretary of the All India Tennis Association (AITA), Mr. Anil Khanna, gave away the prizes.
The results (finals):
Boys singles: Sunil Kumar bt Tai-Wei Liu (Tpe) 6-7 (4-7), 7-5, 6-3.
Boys doubles: Wang Cheng Hsieh and Yi- Chang Wu bt Tai-Wei Liu and Cheuh-Cheng Shih (Tpe) 6-3, 6-2.
Girls singles: Chin-Wei Chan (Tpe) bt Da-Jung Hong (Kor) 6-3, 6-4.
India's Sunil Kumar (left) and Chinese Taipei's Chin-Wei Chan are all smiles as they pose with their trophies after claiming the boys and girls singles titles respectively in the Asian junior tennis championship in New Delhi on Saturday.
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