Paes raises hope after Prajnesh, Sumit crash out

Bengaluru, February 13

The country’s top players Prajnesh Gunneswaran and Sumit Nagal lost in the pre-quarterfinals, ending India’s challenge in the men’s singles event of the Bengaluru Open here today. However, there was some cheer in the Indian camp as Leander Paes, who is in his last year of professional tennis, entered the men’s doubles semifinals with Australian Matthew Ebden.

World No. 124 and seventh seed Gunneswaran threw in the towel to the lower-ranked Benjamin Bonzi, losing 6-7(5) 0-6 to the world No. 368 Frenchman. Eighth seed Nagal lost 3-6 3-6 to 11th seed Blaz Rola of Slovenia.

“I was not comfortable coming into the match,” Gunneswaran said. “I did not play as I wanted to. I am still trying to figure out what was wrong. I was just able to coordinate my movements. I wanted to play aggressive shots but most of the time I was defending,” he added.

“I should have broken him a little earlier in the first set. And after going 4-1 up, I thought I was back into my element. He still played well but I did not do anything to match him,” he added.

The other Indians to make the exit were 17th seed Ramkumar Ramanathan, Saketh Myneni, wild card entrant Niki Poonacha and Sidharth Rawat.

Three-setter

Paes and Ebden beat third seeds Andre Goransson of Sweden and Christopher Rungkat of Indonesia 7-5 0-6 10-7. Goransson and Rungkat had won an ATP event last week.

Earlier, Myneni and Matt Reid of Australia beat top seeds Cheng-Peng Hsieh of Chinese Taipei and Denys Molchanov of Ukraine 3-6 6-4 10-8 to enter the semifinals.

Purav Raja and Ramanathan recorded a 6-4 6-4 victory over Portugal’s Frederico Silva and Serbia’s Nikola Milojevic. — PTI