Arjun Kadhe, Saketh Myneni and Prajnesh Gunneswaran took the stage on centre court with easy straight-set wins to enter the pre-quarterfinals of the ATP Chennai Open Challenger at the SDAT Tennis Stadium here on Wednesday
In the first match of the day, Pune’s Kadhe squared up against Jose Hernandez-Fernandez and had a walk in the park with an easy 6-3, 6-2 win.
Kadhe played aggressively with some powerful groundstrokes, backed with solid serves that included seven aces. He was successful immediately, breaking in the opening game.
In the second set, Kadhe looked even better and broke in the third to take a 2-1 lead after some brilliant groundstrokes that induced errors from the Dominican Republic player. Kadhe pounced on a second serve with a backhand winner at 15-40 to take the break. The Pune-based player then broke again with ease to go ahead 5-2 and closed out the match easily.
Prajnesh defeated German Daniel Altmaier 6-4, 6-4. The India No. 1 started well and threatened to break the German’s serve in the opening game. But he had to wait until the ninth game to do so. He produced two perfect block returns, with the first one just sailing over the net for a winner that caught the German by surprise, and another similar low return inducing an unfoced error from Altmaier.
The German then missed an overhead straight into the net before Prajnesh hit a forehand pass down the line to take the break and served out the set with an ace.
The results (Indians unless specified): Second round: Arjun Kadhe bt Jose Hernandez-Fernandez (Dom) 6-3, 6-2; Corentin Moutet (Fra) bt Luke Saville (Aus) 6-2, 6-7(1), 6-4; Gianluca Mager (Ita) bt Collin Altamirano (USA) 6-3, 6-1; Laurynas Grigelis (Ltu) bt Nam Hoang Ly (Vie) 4-6, 6-2, 6-1; Saketh Myneni bt Vijay Sundar Prashanth 6-4, 6-3; James Duckworth (Aus) bt Ivan Gakhov (Rus) 7-6(2), 7-5; Soonwoo Kwon (Kor) bt Alexander Zhurbin (Rus) 6-1, 6-2; Gastao Elias (Por) bt Blake Ellis (Aus) 6-2, 7-6(4); Prajnesh Gunneswaran bt Daniel Altmaier (Ger) 6-4, 6-4; Brydan Klein (GBR) bt Maverick Banes (Aus) 6-4, 6-1.
