Tennis: Nagal loses; Prajnesh advances to quarters

Top seed Prajnesh Gunneswaran booked a singles quarter-final berth at the Jinan Open with a hard-fought win over Chinese Taipei's Tung-Lin Wu, in Jinan, China on Thursday.

The Indian left-hander had to toil hard before prevailing 6-4, 7-6(3) in the third round of the $162,480 hard court tournament.

Prajnesh had plenty of breakpoints but could convert only two of the eight and dropped his serve once in the one-hour-34-minute clash.

He next faces Japanese eighth seed Go Soeda, who steam-rolled Chinese Di Wu 6-1, 6-2 in his third round match

Meanwhile, in the doubles event, three Indians will feature in the semi-finals.

Top seed Divij Sharan and Matthew Ebden beat Pedja Krsten and Akira Santillan 6-1, 6-4 in just 45 minutes.

They will now take on fourth-seeded Indian pair of Saketh Myneni and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan, who overcame Hiroki Moriya and Goncalo Oliveira 7-5, 6-2 in the other quarter-final.

At the Aon Open Challenger in Genoa, Italy, India's challenge has ended in the first round in both singles and doubles.

Sumit Nagal, playing his first event after the high of US Open where he took a set off Roger Federer, suffered a 1-6, 5-7 defeat to local wild card Giulio Zeppieri.

In the doubles, Purav Raja and his Australian partner lost narrowly 6-7 (2), 6-7(3) to Fernando Romboli and Attila Balazs.

At the Cassis Open in France, 12th seed Ramkumar Ramanathan lost his singles second round 3-6, 2-6 to Germany's Daniel Masur.

However, he reached the doubles quarter-final with Russian partner Evgeny Karlovskiy with 6-4, 6-1 win over fourth seed Croatian pair of Ivan Sabanov and Matej Sabanov.