Preeti, Medini shown the door

CHENNAI, AUG. 14. On a largely uneventful day when wannabe champions spent a long time waiting for the courts to recover from pre-dawn showers, two seeded girls were beaten and a brave TATE boy embraced victory from a near hopeless position in the IOB-MCC National junior hardcourt tennis championship (under-18) at the MCC courts on Tuesday.

It was five hours after the originally scheduled start of 7 a.m. when the first ball was struck on a day when only a few girls seeds were in action with all the seeded boys having completed their first round matches on Monday.

And the two seeds, who went back disappointed were Preeti Rao of Tamil Nadu, the No. 6, and Medini Sharma of Maharashtra, seeded 7. If Preeti had only herself to blame after disappearing in a heap of errors against Iciri Rai of Karnataka, who won 4-6, 6-2, 6-2. Then Medini found it necessary to point a finger at the chair umpire after going down 2-6, 5-7 to Sandra Sasidharan of Kerala.

Preeti looked to be doing well at the start as she took the first set without fuss but soon her serve let her down even as Iciri raised her game a notch. Preeti's double faults proved costly, while Iciri started playing confidently, hitting some lovely forehand crosscourt passes.

Iciri opened up a 4-0 lead in the second set and after knotting up the match put on a burst of speed on the home stretch, winning four games in a row to the finish from 2-2 in the decider.

Meanwhile, Vijay Sundar Prasanth, a finalist at the recent sub- junior National championship and a trainee at the Tamil Nadu Academy for Tennis Excellence (TATE), stared defeat in the face without batting an eyelid, held his nerve, and stormed past Amit Chawla 6-4, 4-6, 7-5.

Vijay Sundar was down 2-5 in the decider but he came back strongly and shook off four matchpoints against him on serve in the 10th game before breaking serve in the next and serving out the match.

The results: (all first round):

Boys: Manoj Kumar Sewa (WB) bt Srikrishna Ramanathan (TN) 6-2, 2- 6, 6-2; Vijay Sundar Prasanth (TN) bt Amit Chawla (TN) 6-4, 4-6, 7-5; P. Vishal (AP) bt P. Vikas (AP) 7-6, 6-4; Ajay Selvaraj (TN) bt Vijit Sehal (Del) 6-1, 6-3; Divij Sharan (Del) bt V.M. Ranjeet (TN) 7-5, 6-1; C. Tejeswar (Kar) bt Rupesh Roy (WB) 6-2, 7-5; M. Jayakar (TN) bt Amrit Roopsingh (Del) 1-6, 6-3, 6-4.

Girls: Fatima Baig (TN) bt Reenu Jayakumar (Kar) 1-6, 6-4, 6-1; Vimal Rahini (WB) bt Roopa Chopra (Kar) 6-0, 6-2; Iciri Rai (Kar) bt Preeti Rao (TN) 4-6, 6-2, 6-2; Priyanka Parekh (WB) bt K.A. Swathy (TN) 6-0, 6-1; Sandra Sasidharan (Ker) bt Medini Sharma (Mah) 6-2, 7-5; Geeta Manohar (AP) bt Varsha Dutta (Asm) 6-0, 6- 1; Nupur Desai (Mah) bt Asha Nandakumar (Kar) 6-0, 7-5.

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