ITF Mysuru Open: Seeds take appointed spots

Fifth seed Mohit Mayur Jayaprakash (Ind) executes a back-hand return during his victory over Japan's Shotaro Goto to enter the last eight in the Sobha ITF Mysuru Open here on Wednesday.

MYSURU (Karnataka), May 27: The top eight seeds of the Sobha ITF Mysuru Open took their appointed places in the last eight of the men’s singles event with three off the eight being forced to rally from being down a set to surge through.

Local lad and Karnataka’s top player Suraj Prabodh was perhaps the most unluckiest player of the day. Playing at the top of his game the Mysuru boy matched the big hitting Vishnu Vardhan with some wise and sensible tennis to claim the first set via a lengthy tie-breaker prevailing at 12-10.

The second set of the match that was interrupted by rain when scores were 4-3 in favour of Suraj, the games going with serve. On resumption of play after more than 90 minutes break, the players made it 5-all.

Suraj squirmed with anguish after serving and losing the first point. However the lad continued and managed to take the game to deuce before conceding the advantage to the former Davis Cupper, when severe cramps seized his left leg and he fell down screaming in anguish.

With the physio attending to him on court and the time ticking, the second set was awarded to Vishnu after which Suraj made a valiant attempt to continue, found it impossible and conceded the tie.

The big serving Vishnu served 12 aces to Suraj’s 3 and enjoyed seven break points against Suraj none, but one counted as a conversion with Suraj being timed out.

Top seed Ramkumar Ramnathan was given a wake up a call by country-mate Sidarth Rawat who claimed the first set before the Indian Davis Cupper shrugged off the indifference to claim the next two sets.

However, it was fifth seed Mohit Mayur who was the first to be shaken out of a reverie by Japan’s Shotaro Goto. The unseeded Japanese fought hard to take the first set to the tie-break and claimed it too before Mohit raised the level of his game many decibles to take his appointed place.

Results: Prefix denotes seeding:

Singles (Second round) (All Indians unless mentioned): (5) Mohit Mayur Prakash bt Shotaro Goto (Jpn) 6-7 (3), 6-4, 6-1; (7) Vinayak Sharma Kaza bt Rishab Agarwal 6-0, 6-1;(3) Ranjeet Virali Murugesan bt S.D Prajwal Dev 6-3, 6-2; (6) Jui-Chen Hung (Tpe) bt Lakshit Sood 6-4, 6-1; (2)Karunuday Singh bt Anvit Bendre 6-1, 6-3; (4) Sasi Kumar Mukund bt Rashein Samuel 6-2, 7-5; (1) Ramkumar Ramnathan bt Sidarth Rawat 4-6, 6-4, 6-2; (8) Vishnu Vardhan bt Suraj Prabodh 6-7 (10), 7-5 (Retd).

In doubles play, the top seeded pair of Ramkumar Ramnathan and Ranjeet Virali_Murugesan withdrew from their quarter-final match with the latter aggravating his knee, which has troubled him since the last event in Mandya.

The top seeds were trailing 1-2 against the Indo/Taipe pair of Sasi Kumar Mukund and Jui-Chen Hung.

Fourth seeds, the Sood twins and the second seeded pair of Mohit Mayur Jayaprakash and Vinayak Kaza made it to the semis while the last match between the unseeded teams of Bhavesh Gour and Sidarth Rawat against Jayesh Pungliya and Nitin Kumar Sinha was suspended due to bad light with the latter named duo claiming the first set 6-3.

Doubles Results: Quarter-finals: Bhavesh Gour/Sidarth Rawat (Ind) vs Jayesh Pungliya (Ind) 3-6 (match suspended); (2) M M Jayaprakash/Vinayak Kaza (Ind) bt Sagar Ahuja/Jatin Dahiya (Ind) 6-1, 6-4; (4) Chandril/Lakshit Sood (Ind) bt Rohit Bhatia/Maninder Singh 7-6(2), 6-1; Jui-Chen Hung (Tpe)/Sasi Kumar Mukund (Ind) bt (1) Ramkumar Ramnathan/Ranjeet Virali Murugesan 2-1 (Retd).