Ajay Ramaswami halts
Ivanov's run

National Games gold medallist Ajay Ramaswami halted Pavel Ivanov's amazing run with a hard-fought victory in the second round of the $10,000 ITF men's Futures tennis tournament at the DLTA Courts on Wednesday.

The unseeded 19-year-old Russian had, on Tuesday, packed off fourth seed Vijay Kannan, and had also overcome Davis Cup player Harsh Mankad to win the first leg at Chandigarh last week. But he met his match in Ramaswami, who rallied after losing the first set to win 4-6, 6-1, 7-6(7/3).

The fall of Ivanov coincided with the corresponding rise of Ramaswami. The Indian's performance had been on the wane in the last few months but since the nationals last month his game has improved with each match.

After losing the first set rather tamely, Ramaswami broke the Russian's serve thrice in the second set alone and then stepped up the pace in the decider, which went into the tie-breaker.

Newly-crowned national champion Vinod Sridhar made short work of sixth seed Boris Borgula of Slovakia, winning 6-1, 6-2 in just 54 minutes.

Jaco T Mathew, another youngster who is making fast strides, was impressive in his 6-3, 7-6(7/4) defeat of Malaysia's Yew Ming Si, who had accounted for the top seed Mustafa Ghouse on Tuesday.

In Thursday's quarter-finals, Mathew will meet Rishi Sridhar, who upset seventh seed Jan Masik of the Czech Republic 6-4, 6-4.

Kedar Tembe gave ample display of his class, scoring a 7-5, 6-4 victory over 26-year-old Vishal Uppal, another Davis Cup player.

The remaining two seeded players, Juraj Hasko (2nd) of Slovakia and Manoj Mahadevan (8th) will meet in another quarter-final.

The former beat Joseph Huber 6-2, 6-3 while the latter overcame Kamala Kannan 6-3, 6-7(5/7), 6-4.

Yesterday's report
Four seeds bite the dust