It was a good day at office for Indians as three of them moved into the quarter-finals in the $10,000 ITF Futures men's tennis tournament at the Delhi Lawn Tennis Association courts on Wednesday.
Fifth-seeded Rohan Bopanna was a bit scratchy on his first serves but still had little difficulty in coming through
with a 6-3, 6-4 victory against Indonensian Peter Handoyo.
Harsh Mankad, on the adjacent court, had to overcome a stiff challenge from Tomislav Peric before winning 7-6 (9/7),
6-2.
Sunil Kumar Sipaeya, another promising talent, overcame a sluggish start to prevail 6-4, 6-4 over compatriot Manoj
Mahadevan in a tussle which lasted an hour and 21 minutes.
Wild card Vinod Sridhar, who had won the national hardcourts title on the same courts, went down to Dmitri Vlasov,
the second seed, 305th ranked from Russia, 6-1, 6-4 in 50 minutes.
Bulgarian Todor Enev, winner of the first leg at Lucknow, moved one step closer to his second title beating Alexander
Pavlioutchenkov of Russia 6-2, 6-1.
Croatian Peric, who had accounted for top seed Mikael Elgin of Russia in the first round, troubled Mankad with his
huge forehands. But Mankad withstood the onslaught and fought back from being 3-5 down to force the first set into
the tie-breaker.
After averting two set points, Peric hit a forehand long to give away the set. Into the second set, the Croatian's game
nosedived while Mankad began to soak the pressure with his relentless ground strokes.
That, however, did not stop Peric, down a break, from being sporting enough to correct a line-call in his opponent's favour.
"The ball was good, that's it," he said after the match.
Mahadevan was twice up in the match, 4-1 in the first set and 4-2 in the second, but on both the occasions failed to
sustain the pressure with his weak serves.
"I like to come to the net more often but then my first serves let me down today. When you have a pop gun serve you
can't do much," said Mahadevan, who was broken six times in the match.