Sport - Tennis   

Grasscourts should favour home players

By Kamesh Srinivasan

LUCKNOW JAN. 6. The best of Indian talent may not be here, but it will be for the rest to make their present felt in the $10,000 ITF Futures tennis tournament at the Oudh Gymkhana Club grasscourts here.

With Rohan Bopanna, Sunil Kumar, Vinod Sridhar and Vishaal Uppal are busy with the Petroleum tournament in Assam, it will be up to the likes of Harsh Mankad, Nitin Kirtane, Mustafa Ghouse, Vijay Kannan, Manoj Mahadevan and Ajay Ramaswami to keep the Indian hopes alive. More than keeping the hopes alive, the Indian lot will have the onerous task of maintaining the recent Indian trend of throwing up singles champions in these events at home.

The grasscourts should favour the home players, who have the patience to bend their back. In fact, the surface will discourage the foreigners who are more used to a fair and even bounce. Serving well will be the key, as was demonstrated by the big-built Anjan Viplav, who served four aces when trying to stay in the match at 5-6 in the decider, against Marc-Xavier Pijoan-Gasso of Spain. The Navy officer prevailed in the end, in the tie-break, his second such triumph in as many rounds.

Anjan's final round qualifying match against the 13th seeded Acaymo Medina-Rivero of Spain, scheduled for the morrow, should be interesting as the Indian has the confidence on his serve to make the main draw. Parantap Chaturvedi was 6-3, 2-6 against the seventh-seeded Febi Widhyanto of Indonesia in the final qualifying round. The match was abandoned because of bad light.

Harsh Mankad will start his campaign against fellow wild card entrant Gurmehar Singh. With the Davis Cup against Japan scheduled to be held on grass in Delhi in the first week of February, Harsh will be quite keen to make his claim with a good fare here.

Rishi Sridhar will have to be at his best against the top-seeded Mikhail Elgin of Russia. Mustafa Ghouse and Vijay Kannan will start against qualifiers, who will have the advantage of having got used to the conditions here.

The eighth-seeded Nitin Kirtane can hope to make a mark as he takes on Alexander Pavlioutcheni of Russia in the first round. Manoj Mahadevan will be up against Alexei Ageev of Russia. Ajay Ramaswami will meet the fifth-seeded Todor Enev of Bulgaria in the first round.

Meanwhile, Naim Lalji, a Briton of Indian origin, showed his liking for the surface by cruising into the main draw, beating the fourth-seeded Serguei Pozdnev of Russia on the way. Lalji, however, was close to elimination when he hit the ball in frustration after a point. To his luck, his shot, aimed in a general direction, hit the side fence. Had he found a spectator standing nearby with his wild hit, he would have been defaulted.

Jason Torpey was the other Briton to make the main draw. These two will be able to make a dent on the aspirations of some of the more fancied players.

Overall, it should be an interesting week of tennis, when the conditions will test the players a lot more than their opponents.

The results (qualifying event):

Third and final round: Orest Tereshchuk (Ukr) bt Andrey Kojemiakine (Rus) 6-1, 6-0; Suwandi Suwandi (Ina) bt Alexei Sergueev (Rus) 7-6 (8-6), 6-2; Peter Hnadoyo (Ina) bt Vadim Davletshin (Rus) 6-2, 6-2; Naim Lalji (GBR) bt Jorge Garcia Marin (Esp) 6-2, 6-1; Hendri-Susilo Pramono (Ina) bt Alexander Lissenko (Rus) 6-3, 7-5; Jason Torpey (GBR) bt Shantanu Dhaka 6-3, 6-2.

Second round: Vadim Davletshin bt Hector Tolosana Berdiel (Esp) 2-6, 6-3, 6-2; Naim Lalji bt Serguei Pozdnev (Rus) 6-3, 7-5; Jorge Garcia Marin bt Tobias Steinel-Hansson (Swe) 6-4, 6-4; Alexander Lissenko bt Punna Vishal 7-5, 6-2; Hendri-Susilo Pramono bt Vijayendra Laad 6-1, 6-1; Jason Torpey (GBR) bt Shivang Mishra 1-6, 6-3, 6-3; Shantanu Dhaka bt Alexandre Renard (Fra) 6-3, 6-3; Febi Widhiyanto (Ina) bt Nishank Mishra 6-2, 6-2; Parantap Chaturvedi bt Sung Hyuk Yu (Kor) 6-3, 6-3; Anjan Viplav bt Marc-Xavier Pijoan-Gasso (Esp) 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (7-4); Acaymo Medina-Rivero (Esp) bt Andrey Stepanov (Ukr) 7-5, 6-2.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport

News: Front Page | National | Southern States | Other States | International | Opinion | Business | Sport | Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary |

Stories in this Section

Athletics

• Junior National meet from today
  
  Billiards & Snooker
  
• Pankaj makes semifinals
  
  Chess
  
• Blitz game all set to take centrestage
• Harikrishna is joint second
• Deepan, Poobesh and Siddarth share lead
  
  Cricket
  
• Get Tendulkar back to where he belongs
• England wins at last
• Bond back for fifth one-dayer
• North begins on a winning note
  
  Football
  
• Omagbemi takes Salgaocar into semifinals
• Indian team for SAFF championship
  
  Hockey
  
• Punjab Police claims Dhyan Chand Cup
  
  Tennis
  
• Grasscourts should favour home players
  
  Weightlifting
  
• Tamil Nadu makes a good start
  
  

Copyright © 2003, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu