The Hindu : Samrita shocks Sai Jayalakshmi

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Feb 11, 2003

Sport

Sport - Tennis

Samrita shocks Sai Jayalakshmi

By K. Keerthivasan

CHENNAI FEB. 10. Wild card entrant Samrita Sekar woke up after a sedate start to hand out a 2-6, 7-6 (7-4), 6-4 defeat to National grasscourt champion and fourth seed Sai Jayalakshmi in the first round of the Madras Gymkhana Club ITF $10,000 women's tennis championship at the club courts on Monday.

Leading 3-0 in the second set, with the first already in the kitty, Sai looked to be in ominous touch — wonderful returns, pinpoint groundstrokes, when Samrita started to hit back.

Breaking Sai in the fifth, seventh and eleventh games, Samrita took the second set into a tiebreaker, which she won with relative ease.

Her forte, the groundstrokes were bang on target in the decider.

Sai, who was serving to stay in the match at 4-5, doublefaulted on the first point, and soon lost the match when a backhand of hers went long.

Fifteen double faults; 10 in the second set did not help Sai's cause at all. On the other hand, Samrita despite making numerous unforced errors committed only seven.

"It is an important win in my career," said Samrita. "I wanted to keep an extra ball in play, and let her (Sai) make the mistakes. After defeating Sai in the final of the $5000 tournament in Bombay in April 2002, I have been losing early in other tournaments."

This win should give Samrita, a trainee of Tamil Nadu Academy of Tennis Excellence, the required motivation to look ahead with confidence.

In another see-saw battle, National junior hardcourt champion and wild card Isha Lakhani went down fighting to Varana-Marei Beller of Germany 6-1, 1-6, 4-6.

There were no such problems for the top seeded Rushmi Chakravarthi, who disposed of the challenge of qualifier Sasha Abraham 6-0, 6-3.

Radhika Tulpule, champion here a couple of years ago, put it across local girl M. Kamini 6-1, 6-1.

* The results (I round): (India unless otherwise specified):

1-Rushmi Chakravarthi bt Sasha Abraham 6-0, 6-3; Varana-Marei Beller (Ger) bt Isha Lakhani 1-6, 6-1, 6-4; Akgul Amanmuradov (Uzb) bt Wilawan Choptang (Tha) 7-5, 6-3; Joulia Vorobeiva (Rus) bt Archana Venkataraman 7-6 (7-4), 6-3; Samrita Sekar bt 4-Sai Jayalakshmi 2-6, 7-6, 6-4; 8-Radhika Tulpule bt M. Kamini 6-1, 6-1; Liza Pereira bt Preeti Rao 7-6 (6-3), 6-4; Diana Julianto (Ina) bt Montinee Tangphong (Tha) 2-6, 6-4, 6-2.

Doubles (first round): Shruti Dhawan/Sheethal Goutham bt Nandini Perumal/Yamini Thukkaiandi 6-4, 6-3; Wilawan Choptang/Montinee Tangphong (Tha) bt Natalia Dziamidzenka (Blr)/Megha Vakharia 4-6, 7-6 (7-5), 6-4; Diana Julianto (Ina)/Radhika Tulpule (Ind) bt Orawan Lamangthong (Tha)/Keiko Tameishi (Jpn) 6-2, 6-0; Maki Arai (Jpn)/Suchanan Viratprasert (Tha) 7-5, 6-1.

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