Harsh Mankad scalps fifth seed Sipaeya
In a battle between two Indian Davis Cup team members, Harsh Mankad scalped fifth seeded
Sunil Kumar Sipaeya 6-1, 6-4, while Russian Alexey Ageev beat
second seeded Nitin Kirtane 6-2, 6-4 in first round matches of
ITF Futures tennis tournament in Chennai on Tuesday.
It was sweet revenge for Mankad, who was beaten by Sipaeya
in the second leg of the tournament in Gulbarga last week.
In the other match, Kirtane committed all sorts of errors
against the Russian, who made it through the qualifying rounds.
Top seed Rohan Bopanna had an easy outing against Shivang
Mishra, winning 6-2, 6-2, while sixth seeded Ajay Ramaswami
defeated Sean Cooper (Ireland) 6-3, 6-4.
In a match that went the distance, India's junior
National champion, Somdev Dev K Varman, fought gallantly before
going down to qualifier, Yew Ming Si of Malaysia 6-4, 4-6, 7-6
(7-5).
Other Indians to progress to the pre-quarterfinals were
Vijay Kannan (4th seed), wild card Rohan Gajjar, Jaco T Mathew
and Vinod Sridhar (8th seed).
Important results: (Indians unless specified): Eliran
Dooyev (Isr) bt Ciaran Moore (Rus) 6-3, 4-2 retd; Sanchai
Ratiwatana (Tha) bt Arun Prakash 6-3, 6-4; Rohan Gajjar bt Yann
Du Puy (Fra) 6-7, 7-6 (0) 6-2; Vijay Kannan bt Vishal Punna 7-5,
5-7, 6-2; Jaco T Mathew bt Dori Sadovnik (Isr) 6-3, 6-2;
Sonchat Ratiwatana (Tha) bt Dekel Valtzer (Isr) 7-6 (7-5), 6-2;
Vinod Sridhar bt Iram Peled (Isr) 6-1, 6-2; Kamala Kannan bt
Stephen Nugent (Ire) 2-6, 6-4, 6-1; Rousian Nourmatov (Rus) bt
Michal Varsanyi (Svk) 6-0, 6-4.
