Kittiphong outsmarts Rifat and Aloyona outguns Jessy in ITF meet

Kolkata, Jan 18 (UNI) Eighth seed Kittiphong Wachiramanowong of Thailand held his nerve to oust top seed Uzbek Rifat Biktyakov in 119 minutes 7-6 (8-6), 7-6 (7-4), while the girls' section saw Ukraine's Alyona Sotnikova showed the door to top seed Jessy Rompies of Indonesia 6-2,4-6, 6-2 in the ITF Junior Tennis meet here today.

In a match that saw two promising Indian pitted against each other, wild card entrant Yuki Bhambri stopped the dream run of qualifier Christopher Marquis.

Yuki took only 51 minutes to defeat the Marquis, a trainee of the Mahesh Bhupathi Tennis Academy, 6-1, 6-2.

Former India Davis Cupper, Prahlad Srinath, a coach at the academy and was travelling with five trainees now, however, said his wards were promising.

He will be taking them to Bangladesh tomorrow for the next ITF meet.

Another of his trainees, Sitaram Sundhanwa put up a brave fight against seventh seed Jeong-Han Seo of Korea. A qualifier here, Sudhanwa lost 5-7, 5-7.

Seo will now face second seed Prajnesh Gunneswaran in the semi-finals.

Prajnesh defeated Romanian Andrei Savulescu 6-7 (7-5), 6-1 in an hour and 10 minutes. Gunneswaran also reached the final of the boys' doubles.

Two double faults caused Wachiramanowong to lose the very first game but then he regrouped. In the seventh game he rallied back from 15-40 down to take the game and broke Biktyakov in the 10th to take the score to 5-5.

Both players then retained their serves to take the set to the tiebreak, where Biktyakov failed to convert a set point at 6-5 and eventually lost at 6-8.

In the second set Wachiramanowong broke Biktyakov in the third game only to be broken back in the fourth. Breaks were again traded in the sixth and seventh games and the set was decided again by the tie-breaker which Wachiramanowong won at 7-4.

UNI