Vishal Uppal dished out a top quality serve and volley game to knock out young gun Karan Rastogi in the men's singles semi-finals of the State Bank of Saurashtra National Grass Court tennis championships in New Delhi on Friday.
Uppal demonstrated his superlative skills of lawn tennis to beat 19-year old second seed 7-6 (5), 6-3 to set up an interesting summit clash with top seed Rohan Bopanna in the Rs. 8.36 lakh prize money event.
Bopanna blazed his way to a 6-1, 6-1 mauling of Vishnu Vardhan.
Sanaa Bhambri staged a brilliant comeback from one set and 2-0 down but second seed Isha Lakhani, playing an event on grass for the first time, pulled her socks up in time to win 6-2, 3-6, 7-5 and move into the finals.
Isha will play top seed Rushmi Chakravarthy who faced a stiff challenge from Punam Reddy before prevailing 6-4, 7-5.
The semifinals and finals were moved to the DLTA Complex and the courts played more true than those at the Defence Services Officers' Institute where the qualifiers and earlier main draw matches were played.
The women still had to cope with the low bounce of the outside court where the lone grass surface was elevated and exposed the players to the freezing cold winds.
The men's matches, however, were played on the Centre Court of R K Khanna Stadium where the bounce and pace was relatively good.