Date:04/12/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/12/04/stories/2007120470991900.htm

Sport - Tennis

Mankad, Rastogi make early exit

NEW DELHI: Harsh Mankad and Karan Rastogi fell by the wayside in the first round of the SAIL Open $50,000 ATP Challenger tennis tournament at the DLTA Complex here on Monday.

Mankad was slow to start against Valtzer Dekel of Israel, but failed to hold his service game at the crucial juncture and lost out 3-6, 6-7(3). Dekel broke him in the sixth game of the first set to take it 6-3.

Mankad raised some hopes of a fightback in the second set as he broke his opponent in the second game to take a 4-1 lead. But Mankad failed to capitalise on the advantage as Dekel inched closer by breaking the Indian. Mankad had another chance to take the match into the decider when he served at 5-4. Dekel shot back and took the set into the tie-breaker before winning it.

Rastogi was even less aggressive. He surrendered meekly as the Czech Republic’s Tomas Cakl won 6-0, 6-1 in no time.

Russia’s Pavel Chekhov and qualifier Ilia Marchenko of Ukraine scored upset wins to add some zing to the dour contests.

Marchenko won the first set 6-1 against Juho Paukku before his Finnish opponent retired due to fever. He now awaits the winner of the match between top seeded Kristian Pless of Denmark and India’s Vivek Shokeen. Chekhov scored a 7-5, 6-1 win to oust eighth-seeded Adrian Cruciat of Romania.

The results (first round): Iilia Marchenko (Ukr) bt Juho Paukku (Fin) 6-1 retd., Pavel Chekhon (Rus) bt Adrian Cruciat (Rou) 7-5, 6-1, Dekel Valtzer (Isr) bt Harsh Mankad 6-3, 7-6(3), Michail Elgin (Rus) bt Hae Sung An (Kor) 6-0, 6-2, Joshua Goodall (Gbr) bt Hyun-Woo Nam (Kor) 6-2, 6-4, Alberto Francis (U.S.) bt Benjamin Balleret (Mon) 6-3, 6-4, Toman Cakl (Cze) bt Karan Rastogi 6-0, 6-1, Adrian Menendez (Esp) bt Alexey Kedriouk (Kaz) 6-4, 6-4. Doubles: Patrick Briaud (U.S.) and Kedriouk bt Tushar Liberhan and Rupesh Roy 6-3, 7-5, Xin-Yuan Yu (Chn) and Shao-Xuan Zeng (Chn) bt Ivan Sergeyev (Ukr) and Dmitry Vlasov (Rus) 6-4, 7-6(3), Vivek Shokeen and Ashutosh Singh bt Divij Sharan and Navdeep Singh 6-3, 6-4, Martin Slanar (Aut) and Valtzer bt Cakl and Dieter Kindlmann (Ger) 6-4, 6-4. — Principal Correspondent