India’s Kaza Vinayak Sharma caused a major upset when he ousted the second seeded Marc Giner of Spain in straight sets in the first round of the men’s singles event of the ITF Futures tournament, in Chennai on Tuesday.
Sharma showed consistency during a two-hour long battle to prevail 6-3 7-6(3) over his Spanish opponent.
The Indian took the upper hand when he broke Giner, a runner up at Trichy the previous week, in the eighth game of the first set.
In the second set, Marc came under pressure while serving in the third game that he won on the seventh deuce. Again in seventh game he managed to hold on to his serve after fifth deuce.
Sharma, on the other hand, served well to hold his service games comfortably. He served a total of four aces in the set, three of them in the second game.
The set went into a tiebreaker, and Sharma played well and with help of two unforced errors from Marc won it 7-3.
Sharma will next meet Austin Karosi of the U.S. in the second round.
Meanwhile, top seed Vijayant Malik, third seed V. M. Ranjit, fourth seed Jeevan Neduncheziyan, fifth seed N. Sriram Balaji and seventh seed Gaetan De Lovinfosse of Belgium won in straight sets to move into the second round.
Singles (1st round): Vijayant Malik (1, Ind) bt Virien Matthieu (ITA) 7-5 6-2; Ronak Manuja (Ind) bt Krishik Divakar (Ind) 6-2 6-3; Ajai Selvaraj (Ind) bt Elwin Anthony 6-3 3-6 6-2; N Sriram Balaji (5, Ind) bt P C Vignesh (Ind) 7-6(5) 6-3; Jeevan Neduncheziyan (4, Ind) bt Ramkumar Ramanathan (Ind) 6-3 7-6(1); G De Lovinfosse(7, BEL) bt Vignesh Veerabadran (Ind) 6-3 6-0; Ranjit Virali Murugesan (3, Ind) bt Neeraj Elangovan (Ind) 6-0 6-1; Austin Karosi (USA) bt Rakshay Thakkar (Ind) 6-4 6-1 6-1; Kaza Vinayak Sharma (Ind) bt Marc Giner (2, ESP) 6-3 7-6(3).
Doubles (1st round): Kunal Anand/Ronal Manuja bt Marc Giner(ESP)/Mark Vervoort(NED) w.o., Jeevan Neduncheziyan/Vijay Sundar Prashanth (4) bt Vijay Kannan/R Arun Prakash 7-5 6-3; Abhijit Tiwari/Ashwin Vijayraghavan bt Peter Goldsteiner(AUT)/ Austin Karosi(USA) 6-3 6-0; Gaetan De Lovinfosse/Yannivk Vandenbulke(BEL) bt Andre Gaspar Murta/Bruno Pedroso(POR) 6-2 7-6(1); Rupesh Roy/Vivek Shokeen bt Ajai Selvaraj/Rakshay Thakkar 6-3 6-3.
