Sport - Tennis

Karunuday downs Balaji

CHENNAI: It took less than 60 minutes on court to scupper Sriram Balaji’s aspirations of ITF-Futures glory on Monday.

Confronted with a tenacious racket-wielder from Delhi in the first round of the GNC-Dr. K.C.G. Verghese tournament at Gandhinagar Club here, the Stanley Cup winner was outrun, outplayed and unceremoniously escorted out of the tournament by wildcard entrant Karunuday Singh with a 6-3, 6-1 scoreline.

After swapping breaks to start off the first set, Singh continued to hound Balaji’s service, breaking him four more times (twice in each set) to coast to victory.

Singh also proved later that his racket wasn’t the only one talking.

When apprised of the worth of his scalp — considering Balaji’s former National junior champion status — he drawled with just a hint of smugness: “Oh really, I had no idea. He couldn’t have done anything today anyway. I just played too well.”

Day one of the singles draw belonged to the Indians, not surprising since the lone foreigner in the fray was a clueless Pakistan player.

The weaker player with a tendency to overshoot in his attempts at baseline power play, Yasir Khan was handed his departure papers by Murali Mithun in emphatic fashion.

Yasir failed to trouble the scorers in the second set after putting up a meaner resistance in the first. Quick, sprightly and always a pico second away from pumping his fists, Murali preyed on the pallid returns and dictated terms from the back of the court, occasionally surprising his opponent with nifty angles on his volleys.

There was nothing really that the Pakistan player could have done as the last tactical resort of availing himself of a medical timeout while trailing 0-5 went in vain and Murali closed out the match promptly after resumption.

Other players in action included Vinod Sridhar, who was totally nonplussed in despatching Vikas Chauhan in two brisk sets.

Sridhar split his four breaks of serve over two sets and gave Chauhan little chance to claw back into the match.

On Court three, an equally concise encounter saw Vishnu Vardhan dismiss Shivang Mishra with four breaks of serve divided equally across two sets.

The results: Singles first round: Vinod Sridhar bt Vikas Chauhan 6-2, 6-2; Karunuday Singh bt Sriram Balaji 6-3, 6-1; Vishnu Vardhan bt Shivang Mishra 6-2, 6-2; Murali Mithun bt Yasir Khan (Pak) 7-5, 6-0.

Doubles first round: Ashutosh Singh / Sunil Kumar Sipaeya bt Kamala Kannan/ Vinod Sridhar 6-3, 7-6(4); I-Ta Chen/ Hsin Han Lee bt Whit Livingston/ Yannick Nelord 7-6(2), 6-2; Peter Gojowczyk / Yuichi Sugita bt Vijayant/ Ronak Manuja 6-4, 6-4; Christopher Marquis/ Abhijeet Tiwari bt Irfan Hussain/ Yasir Khan 6-1, 6-3; N. Vijay Sundar Prashanth / V. M. Ranjeet bt V. P. Chandrasekhar / Ajay Selvaraj 7-6(2), 6-3; Aqueel Khan / Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan bt Rohan Gajjar; Tushar Liberhan 6-3, 6-7(5), 10-6; Divij Sharan / Vishnu Vardhan bt Prajnesh Gunneswaran / S. Narayanaswamy 6-3, 6-4; Alexey Kedryuk / Rupesh Roy bt Murali Mithun / Karunuday Singh 6-2, 6-2.

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