Fancied Players Progress to ITF Davangere Open Men's Pre-Quarters

All of the seeded players advanced to the men's singles pre-quarterfinals of the ITF Davangere Open Men's World Tennis Tour, indicating an intense battle ahead in the US $ 15,000 event.

First seed Nick Chappell of the United States led the march of the seeds at the District Tennis Association, Davangere courts here on Wednesday, defeating wild card entrant Ranjeet Virali-Murugesan 7-6 (3), 6-0.

Second seeded Bogdan Bobrav was given an unpleasant surprise when qualifier Tushar Madan won the first set 4-6. But, the lanky player redeemed himself by winning the second set 6-2 and the third set even easily at 6-0.

Third seeded Indian Digvijay Pratap Singh had to dig deep to defeat qualifier Rohan Mehra in a gripping three-setter 4-6, 6-3, 6-2, while fourth seed Florent Bax of France easily defeated another wild card Ajay Malik 6-1, 6-2.

The most fascinating match of the day, however, was between ITF Dharwad winner Ramkumar Ramanathan and Ishaque Eqbal, which lasted 2 hours and 32 minutes. The latter put on a strong performance, breaking Ramkumar's service in the fourth game to take a 3-1 lead. By the sixth game, Ramkumar had restored parity, and both opponents held their individual serves, forcing the set to be decided by a tiebreaker, which Ramkumar won 7-4.

Both players broke each other's serve once in the second set before the youngster took a 4-2 lead but could not hold on to the advantage, thanks to many unforced errors and a couple of good passing shots by the Davis Cupper, who won the next three games to take a slender 5-4 lead and later broke Ishaque's serve in the 12th game to take the set.

Ishaque took a 2-0 lead in the third set but quickly fell behind 2-3. After a few of line decisions going against him, Ramkumar's raucous comments on the court damaged his opponent's confidence, and he won the deciding 6-3 to go to the round of 16.

Results

(Seeds in parenthesis, Country except India mentioned in brackets)

Singles Round of 32

2-Bogdan Bobrov bt Q-Tushar Madan 4-6, 6-2, 6-0; 1-Nick Chappell (USA) bt WC-Ranjeet Virali-Murugesan 7-6 (3), 6-0; Vishnu Vardhan bt Faisal Qamar 6-0, 6-1; Ramkumar Ramanathan bt Ishaque Eqbal 6-7 (4), 7-5, 6-3; 6-SD Prajwal Dev bt WC-Manish Ganesh 6-3, 6-0; 3-Digvijay Pratap Singh bt Rohan Mehra 4-6, 6-3, 6-2; 7-Rishab Agarwal bt Luke Sorensen (AUS) 7-6 (5), 6-4; Mitsuki Wei Kang Leong (MAS) bt Kabir Hans 7-5, 6-4; Manish Sureshkumar bt Q-Atharva Sharma 6-2, 6-1; Dev Javia bt Q-Raghav Jaisinghani 6-0, 6-3; Niki Kaliyanda Poonacha bt Nitin Kumar Sinha 6-3, 6-3; 4-Florent Bax (FRA) bt WC-Ajay Malik 6-1, 6-2; Q-Madhwin Kamath bt Q-Sai Karteek Reddy Ganta 4-6, 7-6 (10), 6-4; Q-Adil Kalyanpur Vs. Siddhanth Banthia 7-6 (4), 6-5 (interrupted, to be continued tomorrow).