Samrita Sekar shocks Tulpule on way to semis
Eighth seed Samrita Sekar shocked second seed Radhika Tulpule 6-4, 7-5 to enter the semi-finals in the ITF Futures women's tennis tournament at the Shivaji Park Gymkhana in Mumbai on Thursday.
Samrita, playing an attacking game, subdued the Mumbai
girl in one hour 12 minutes.
In the first set, Samrita dropped her serve in the second
game but came back strongly to break her opponent in very next
game. She got a crucial break in the ninth game to win the set
6-4.
In the second set, Tulpule dropped serve in the fifth
game but fought back well to break her rival in the sixth game
to level the score at 3-all. The Mumbai girl showed her fighting
qualities again and broke Samrita in the tenth game after
failing to hold her own in the ninth to level the scores at
five.
However, Samrita, played some incredible passing shots to
break Tulpule in the 11th game and then served out the
match at 7-5.
In other quarter-final matches, third seed Sai Jayalakshmi rallied well, after dropping the first set to pip sixth seed Archana Vekatraman 0-6, 6-2, 6-2 in one hour 37 minutes.
Fifth seed Sheetal Goutham took just 53 minutes to beat
wild card Krushmi Chhedha 6-4, 6-1 while fourth seed Sonal
Phadke needed a minute more to beat seventh seed Liza Pereira
6-3, 6-1 to book the last semi-final berth.
In the semi-finals on Friday, Samrita will play Phadke
while Sai will take on Goutham.
Yesterday's report
Easy for seeded players