Eighth seed Megha Vakharia was shocked by her Indian compatriot Parul Goswami in three sets in the only upset of the day in the USD 10,000 Gujarat NRE Coke-ITF Women's Circuit 2005 in Ahmedabad on Monday.
Parul beat the left-handed Megha 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 to enter the second round.
Both the girls found it difficult to hold serves in the tie. The left-handed Megha started with three double faults to lose the opening game of the match before recovering to break her rival's serve twice to take a 3-1 lead.
Then Megha dug deep into her reserves to claw back from 0-40 down to clinch the fifth game before going on to win the opening set by breaking her rival's serve twice more while dropping her own once.
But Parul turned it around in the second set, which she won with a lone break of serve and then outsmarted her more fancied rival to clinch the decider.
In another opening round encounter, local girl Esha Sanghvi fought valiantly before going down to Indian qualifier J Grace Hannah 6-3, 6-7 (5), 3-6.
Results:
Singles (1st round): Vera Leontileva (Rus) bt Pooja Komireddi (Ind) 6-4, 6-0; Sheng-Nan Sun (Chn) bt Deepanwita Chakrabarty 6-3, 6-1; J Grace Hannah (Ind) bt Esha Sanghvi (Ind) 3-6, 7-6(5) 6-3; Karolina Nowak (Ger) bt Sarah Schuize (Ger) 6-2, 6-2; Poonam Reddi (Ind) beat Prithi Shravan (Ind) 6-2, 6-1; Parul Goswami (Ind) bt Megha Vakharia (Ind) 5-7, 6-4, 6-3; Isha Lakhani (Ind) beat Sonal Phadke (Ind) 6-4, 6-4; Sheethal Gautham (Ind) beat Oorrila Ram (Ind) 6-1, 6-3.
