Indian wildcard entrant Yuki Bhambri shocked higher ranked Karol Beck of Slovakia 6-2, 6-3 to make the second round of the ATP Aircel Chennai Open tennis tournament on Monday.
Displaying tremendous variations in pace and game plan, Bhambri, ranked 345 to Beck's 101, eked out his second men's tour win after defeating the Slovakian in 79 minutes in front of a sparse crowd at the Centre Court.
It was tough going for Bhambri as he won the match only on his seventh match point after Beck failed to put across the Indian's cross-court forehand return.
The 19-year-old Bhambri, who brought about the first upset of this lone South Asian ATP tour event, will now meet top seeded Janko Tipservic of Serbia.
Bhambri, who had earlier won a first-round tour match in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2010, was in his elements today and played a waiting game to race to a 4-1 lead with a break in the fourth game and then led 5-2 with another break.
However, his serve was broken in the eighth. But the Delhi-boy held on to his smart serves and wrapped up the first set with his third break.
The Indian, a world junior title winner in Australia, won the match that was also helped by a series of unforced errors by Beck.
In the first set, Beck made few errors and created room for Bhambri to score points. Beck also fared poorly in winning points on serves but upped his game in the second set.
Bhambri maintained the momentum in the second set, broke his rival in the fourth game, held his fifth and played powerful tennis in the sixth to lead 5-1.
Beck tried to make a comeback in the seventh when Bhambri was up on winning the match at 6-2 but lost three match points. The Indian finally managed to win the ninth game and the match.
In another match, India's Vishnu Vardhan let go a match point to lose 4-6, 7-6 (10-8), 6-1 against Ivan Dodig of Croatia.
The Indian was 6-4, 6-6 (6-5) up when Dodig saved the match point and thereafter, pocketed the second set.
The Croat raced through the third set.
In the final qualifying matches for the singles' main draw, Japanese players Go Soeda (fifth seed), Yuichi Sugita, fourth seed Vasak Pospisil of Canada and Thiemo De Bakker (Netherlands) won their respective matches to progress to the next round.
