Ramkumar Ramanathan and Arjun Kadhe were ousted in the opening round of Tata Open Maharashtra tennis tournament here on Tuesday, after hard-fought three-setters against their respective opponents.
While Ramkumar suffered a 6-7(7), 6-4, 3-6 defeat against eight seed Stefano Travaglia, local boy Kadhe was beaten 6-7(5), 7-6(4), 6-2 by Joao Sousa.
Aggressive
Both Ramkumar and Travaglia looked in good touch as they played aggressively in an intense first set.
At 4-4, the Chennai-born player responded well and hit back hard to make it 6-5 before the set went into tie-breaker. Travaglia sealed the set with his big serves.
The top-ranked Indian took control of the second set with a 4-2 lead. He then snatched it quite comfortably in the end with a brilliant serve to level the scores at 1-1.
However, the World No. 93 Travaglia made a strong comeback in the decider to take 5-3 lead. Serving for the match, the Italian didn’t let the momentum slip to pocket the set and the match.
Tough fight
Earlier, the 28-year-old Kadhe made former World No. 28 Sousa work hard for each point in nail-biting first two sets which went into tie-break. However, the Indian’s challenge came to an end after the Portuguese took the charge of the game in the final set and completed a convincing win.
The results (round of 32): Stefano Travaglia (Ita) bt Ramkumar Ramanathan 7-6(7), 4-6, 6-3; Joao Sousa (Por) bt Arjun Kadhe 6-7(5), 7-6(4), 6-2; Emil Ruusuvuori (Fin) bt Egor Gerasimov (Blr) 6-0, 7-6(11).
Bernabe Zapata Miralles (Esp) bt Denis Novak (Aut) 6-4, 6-1; Aleksandar Vukic (Aus) bt Hugo Grenier (Fra) 2-6, 6-2, 7-6(4); Vit Kopriva (Cze) bt Cem Ilkel (Tur) 6-4, 6-2; Kamil Majchrzak (Pol) bt Jay Clarke (GBr) 6-3, 7-5; Elias Ymer (Swe) bt Gian Marco Moroni (Ita) 7-5, 3-6, 6-4.
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