Indian tennis round-up: Ramkumar Ramanathan causes big upset in Shenzen; Bopanna-Balaji stun second seeds in Chengdu
Indian tennis stars made waves on the ATP World Tour with a couple of big wins coming their way on Tuesday. Ramkumar Ramanathan stole the scene at the ATP 250 event in Shenzen, China, as he sailed to a 7-5, 6-1 win over Jiri Vesely of the Czech Republic.
The gulf in the world rankings shows how important a win this was for the Indian player. While the 23-year-old is placed at 134th, the 25-year-old Vesely is more than 40 spots above him at 90.
Ramkumar produced 7 aces and won 93% of his first serve points in this match that took 1 hour 30 minutes to finish. How strong his service games were can be validated by the fact that he did not concede any break point to his opponent.
His own break point conversion rate was, however, not satisfactory as he managed to find success only thrice in 14 attempts.
Ramanathan next takes on the fourth seed Damir Dzumhur, who reached the quarter-finals of the St Petersburg Open last week.
The Indian, who made it to the final of the Hall of Fame Open earlier this year, has qualified for the Shenzen Open by winning a couple of rounds.
Bopanna and Nedunchezhiyan win respective matches
While Ramkumar tasted success at Shenzen, a host of Indians played doubles matches at the Chengdu Open on Tuesday. Rohan Bopanna has paired up with N Sriram Balaji for the first time and the duo made a rollicking start to their partnership when they knocked out the second seeds Julio Peralta and Horacio Zeballos 6-1, 5-7, 10-8.
Bopanna’s Asian Games gold medal-winning doubles partner, Divij Sharan did not have the same fortunes, though. Sharan was seeded third alongside Artem Sitak and the pair made it to the Wimbledon quarter-finals in July.
However, they failed to repeat their exploits as they squandered a one-set lead to go down 6-3, 6-7(2), 7-10 to Austin Krajicek and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan in 1 hour 34 minutes.
At the Orleans Challenger in France, Purav Raja and Rameez Junaid crashed out after a 6-3, 3-6, 9-11 loss to Yannick Maden and Tristan-Samuel Weissborn.