Wild card Sudanwa Sitaram of India was off to a fine start beating Sidharth Rawat 6-1, 7-6(4) in the first round of the Indian Oil Servo ITF Men’s Futures tennis championships here on Monday.
Up against a player ranked much higher than him, Sudanwa won the first set with relative ease, but was stretched to a tie-break in the second.
He later paired with Kaza Vinayak Sharma to upset fourth seeds Aditya Hari Sasongko and Elbert Sie of Indonesia in the first round of the doubles.
The Indian duo fell behind in the first set after losing serve twice, but staged a remarkable comeback to take the set into a tie-break. The Indonesians lost their composure after a call by the chair umpire went against them when down a set point. Sudanwa and Vinayak were handed the set and they went on to blank the Indonesian pair 6-0 in the second.
The results (Indians unless stated): First round: Singles: Yang Lu (Chn) bt Austin Karosi (USA) 6-2, 6-1; Jeson Patrombon (Phi) bt Aditya Hari Sasongko (Ina) 6-0, 4-6, 7-5; Sudanwa Sitaram bt Sidharth Rawat 6-1, 7-6(4).
Doubles: Weerapat Doakmaiklee (Tha) & Perakiat Siriluethaiwattana (Tha) bt Fei Yun Liao (Tpe) & Chieh-Fu Wang (Tpe) 7-5, 7-5; Hyun-Woo Nam (Kor) & Jae-Min Seol (Kor) bt Zach Itzstein (Aus) & Ronak Manuja 6-1, 6-4; Kaza Vinayak Sharma & Sudanwa Sitaram bt Aditya Hari Sasongko (Ina) & Elbert Sie (Ina) 7-6(5), 6-0; Antoine Escoffier (Fra) & Bastien Favier (Fra) bt Suk-Young Jeong (Kor) & Seong-Gook Oh (Kor) 7-5, 6-2; Arjun Kadhe & Jeson Patrombon (Phi) bt Kunal Anand & Ajai Selvaraj 6-2, 2-6,10-4; N. Vijay Sundar Prashanth & Ashwin Vijayragavan bt Vivek Shokeen & Abhijeet Tiwari 6-3, 6-2; Chih-Jen Ho (Tpe) & Rakshay Thakkar bt Ronit Singh Bisht & Saurabh Singh 6-2, 7-5; Saketh Myneni & R. Arun Prakash bt Elwin Antony & Fariz Mohammed 6-4, 6-4.
