It was a day of upsets at the adidas-MCC National junior under-18 tennis championship as the top three seeds in the girls’ draw crashed out.
While Tamil Nadu girls R. Abinikka and Ramya Natarajan accounted for Devanshi Bhimjiyani (third seed) and Vanshika Sawhney (second) respectively, top seed Simran Kaur Sethi was taken out by Sathwika Sama.
Simran’s was in particular an underwhelming loss, as she paid the price for an array of unforced errors. After losing the first set 6-4 and falling behind 2-0 in the second, she broke back to even at 2-2, raising hopes of a comeback. But it was short-lived as she lost four games in a row.
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Sathwika, on her part, made very few errors and executed a few winners in between to claim victory. Sathwika will now meet Abinikka in one semifinal while Ramya will take on third seed Zeel Desai in the other.
For the boys’ top seed B.R. Nikshep it was a routine straight sets win over Manav.N.Pondkule. His semifinal opponent will be Vasisht Vinod Cheruka, a fellow Karnataka player, who battled for over two hours to defeat Basil. L. Khuma in three sets. The other semifinal will be between Nitin Kumar Sinha and S. Manish.
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Girls: Sathwika Sama (AP) bt Simran Kaur Sethi (Del) 6-4, 6-2; R. Abinikka (TN) bt Devanshi Bhimjiyani (Mah) 6-3, 6-2; Zeel Desai (Guj) bt Rishika Ravi (TN) 6-3, 4-6, 6-3; Ramya Natarajan (TN) bt Vanshika Sawhney (Del) 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-2.
Doubles (semifinals): Boys: Vasisht & Prajwal Dev (Kar) bt Mayukh Rawat (Utr) & Faisal Qamar (Raj) 6-3, 6-2; Nenwani Anurag (Del) & Gnana Bhaskar bt Goveas Aryan & Gokule Aditya (Mah) 7-6 (4), 6-0; Girls: Nandini Sharma (Ch) & R. Sai Avanthika (TN) bt Rashmitha Reddy (AP) & Sathwika 5-7, 7-5, 10-7; Vanshika & Ramya bt Devanshi & Zeel 6-1, 6-3.