Fourth seed Arun Prakash Rajagopalan survived some anxious moments before prevailing over Rupesh Roy in the boys' singles while fifth seed Madura Ranganathan was forced to bite the dust in the girls' section, in the Asian Junior tennis championships in Delhi on Wednesday.
Rajagopalan, who failed to find his rhythm in the opening set, was taken to the wire by Roy but kept his composure to move into the quarter-finals with a 2-6, 6-3, 7-5 victory.
The decider was a battle of nerves with both players dropping serve at least twice. In the end, Rajagopalan used all his experience to take the set 7-5.
In the girls' section, Ranganathan had a bad day in office and never looked comfortable against Kartiki Bhat, losing 3-6, 5-7.
Later, sixth seed Zhang Suai of China joined the casualty list, going down to Pichittra Thongdach of Thailand 2-6, 1-6.
Meanwhile, boys' top seed Karan Rastogi had no problems in packing off Cheuk Wai Hui of Hong Kong 6-3, 6-0 and fifth seed Tushar Liberhan thrashed Sumit Gupta 6-1, 6-1 to move into the last eight.
Joining the two were second seed Somdev K Verman, who defeated Navdeep Singh 7-5, 6-4 and third seed Chu-Huan Yi of Chinese Taipei.
Among the girls, top seed Yung-Jan Chan and third seed Wen-Hsin Hsu both of Chinese Taipei, second seed Isha Lakhani, Liu Wang-Ting of China, Ayufani Damayanti of Indonesia and eighth seed Ankita Bhambri completed the quarter-final line-up.
Results (Indians unless specified):
Boys' (under-18): Karan Rastogi bt Cheuk Wei Hui (HKG) 6-3, 6-0; Chu-Huan Yi (TPE) bt Martin Sayer (HKG) 6-3, 7-5; Tushar Liberhan bt Sumit Gupta 6-1, 6-1; A Rajagopalan bt Rupesh Roy 2-6, 6-3, 7-5; Somdev Verman bt Navdeep Singh 7-5, 6-4; Sunu Trijati (INA) bt Yannick Nelord 6-4, 6-1.
Girls' (under-18): Yung-Jan Chan (TPE) bt Parija Maloo 6-0, 6-2; Kartiki Bhat bt Madura Ranganathan 6-3, 7-5; Liu Wang-Ting (CHN) bt N Wannasuk (THA) 6-4, 6-0; A Damayanti (INA) bt Krushmi Chedda 6-2, 6-3; Ankita Bhambri bt Ihsuan Hwang (TPE) 7-5, 7-5; Wen-Hsin Hsu (TPE) bt Pooja Kommireddy 6-1, 6-1; P Thongdach bt Zhang Suai (CHN) 6-2, 6-1; Isha Lakhani bt Punam Reddy 6-0, 6-3.
