Leander thrills, Prajnesh survives

Bengaluru, February 12

A near-capacity crowd witnessed a vintage Leander Paes as the Indian tennis legend fought into the men’s doubles second round in the Bengaluru Open here today.

Paes walked into the stadium to loud cheers and a standing ovation. Paes, who in all probability is playing his last ATP event on Indian soil, and Matthew Abden beat Blaz Rola and Zhizhen Zhang 7-6(2) 6-4. Earlier in the day, Australia’s Abden lost a gruelling three-setter, each set decided via a tie-breaker, to Egypt’s Mohamed Safwat in a match that lasted a little over three hours. His tiredness seemed to have vanished in Paes’ presence as the duo beat the Slovenian-Chinese combine in the first round.

Meanwhile, India’s top-ranked men’s singles player Prajnesh Gunneswaran was stretched by Sebastian Fanselow of Germany en route to the quarterfinals of the $162,480 event. After winning the first set 6-2, the 124th-ranked Indian should have settled the issue in the second after going 3-1 up with a break. However, the defending champion and seventh seed lost his serve in the sixth and 10th games to lose the second set 4-6. In the decider, both players held their serves until the German, ranked more than 400 places below Gunneswaran, lost his serve in the seventh game.

The other Indians to advance into the next round were 17th seed Ramkumar Ramanathan, who beat qualifier Abhinav Shanmugam 6-1 6-3, and Sidharth Rawat, who beat lucky loser Rishi Redyy 6-2 6-2. Italian Julian Ocleppo ousted 10th seed Zhizhen Zhang of China 6-1 6-3, while Frenchman Benjamin Bonzi sent home 12th seed Nikola Milojevic of Serbia with a 6-4 6-1 victory. — PTI