If it was ecstasy for wild card Vinod Gowda, it was agony for eighth seed Vivek Shokeen in the Corporation Bank Manipal Open $10000 ITF men's championship, at the Marena Sports Complex courts of Manipal University here on Tuesday.
Bangalore lad Gowda earned his first ATP points with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Hong Kong's Wing Lun Lam. Playing his first ITF event, the 16-year-old was tentative to start off with, but seemed to grow in confidence, with each point and played some superb shots on either flank. Gowda is a product of the High Performance Training Centre at KSLTA.
Shokeen, the tournament's eighth seed, known better for his exploits in doubles, was prone to errors and committed one too many to go down to Abhijeet Tiwari.
After losing the first 2-6, Shokeen, true to his wont, did come back strongly with his aggressive style of play. But he erred badly in the decider to give Tiwari, who was content on keeping the ball in play, a comfortable win.
Top seed Ranjeet Virali Murugesan packed too many guns for Kunal Anand at 6-2, 6-2 while Rohan Gajjar, seeded two here, was down 0-3 against a fluent Ajai Selvaraj before picking up the threads.
Gajjar caught up at 3-all to win the first set in the tie-break at 7-6(0), before routing the youngster 6-0 in the second. Gajjar looked competent with some pleasing shots and returns of serve.
The results: First round : (All Indians unless specified otherwise):
Singles : Kaza Vinayak Sharma bt Akash Wagh 6-4, 6-1; Sumit Shinde bt Sagar Manjanna 6-3, 6-4; Niki Takuto (Jpn) bt U.M. Gagan Verma 6-0, 6-0; Rohan Gajjar bt Ajai Selvaaj 7-6(0), 6-0; Abhijeet Tiwari bt Vivek Shokeen 6-2, 4-6, 6-2; Sudanwa Sitaram bt Amrit Narasimhan (US) 6-2, retd.; Vitali Reshetnikov (Rus) bt Elwin Antony 6-0, 6-3; Vinod Gowda bt Wing Lun Lam 6-4, 6-3; Vijayant Malik bt Suresh Krishna 6-3, 6-4; Ranjeet Virali Murugesan bt Kunal Anand 6-2, 6-2.
Doubles : Tejasvi Rao & Vikram Reddy bt Niraj Elangovan & Fariz Mohammed 6-1, 6-1; P.C. Vignsh & Kaza Vinayak Sharma bt Sumit Shinde & Gagan Verma 6-2, 6-4.
