French Open: Indians Yuki Bhambri and Ramanathan crash out of Qualifiers

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Paris, May 23: Indian tennis aces Yuki Bhambri and Ramkumar Ramanathan lost their individual matches to crash out of the French Open 2017 Qualifiers on Tuesday (May 23) being played in Paris.

Many Indians were hopeful Bhambri's performance after the 273-ranked Indian shocked top seed and world number 96 Sergiy Stakhovsky in the Karshi ATP Challenger, in Karshi, Uzbekistan to breeze into the singles semifinals in early May.

However, a dismissal performance in French Open qualifiers put all India's hopes in water.

Bhambri gave a tough fight to the 25th seed Canadian and world number 132 Peter Polansky but lost the first round match 6-7(7), 6-7(5).

On the other hand, another Indian Ramkumar Ramanathan lost to Argentina's world No. 114 and 13th seed Guido Pella 2-6 1-6 in a one-sided first round meeting.

Bhambri started well off in the match against Peter Polansky after he took a lead 4-0 in the opening set.

However, the Canadian hold his nerve and breaks Bhambri's serve twice to draw the game to level 4-4. The first set later went on to a tiebreaker where Polansky edged past Bhambri to take the set away.

Again in the second set, Bhambri got the chance to make the impact in the game when he saved the break chance of Polansky to up the game to 3-2. But Polansky again fought back and got a lead of 5-4.

However, Bhambri showed patience in the game and made it 5-5 to take his last chance. The second set also spread to neck and neck and went into the tie breaker. Bhambri saved three match points during the tiebreak but Polansky finished the match in the fourth.

With both the Indians bow out in the qualifiers, no player from the country will now contest in the men's singles event in the highly anticipated second Grand Slam of the year.

OneIndia News