Tennis: India’s Sumit Nagal wins Tampere Open, beats Dalibor Svrcina to lift fourth career Challenger trophy

Indian Tennis star Sumit Nagal won the Tampere Open final on Sunday in Tampere, Finland, and with that, lifted his fourth ATP Challenger Trophy in his fifth outing. Nagal defeated Czech Republic’s Dalibor Svrcina in straight sets (6-4, 7-5) to stand tall in the crunch final. This victory also marks Nagal’s second title this year, as he also won the Garden Open in Rome in April earlier.

The man in form Nagal was up against the 20-year-old in the summit clash and found it hard to race to his fourth ATP Challenger win. The Indian got off to a shaky start as he was trailing 3-0 at one point, which later got extended to 4-1. 

Nagal maintained his composure and broke three back-to-back serves to take a lead and win the first set 6-4. The seventh-seeded Indian won points from the baseline to draw first blood in the all-important final.

With momentum on his side, Nagal took an early lead in the second set and following some positive Tennis, he inched closer to the title win with a 4-1 scoreline. However, the fifth-seeded Czech didn’t let his shoulders down and played some clever Tennis to break two serves to get back into the game.

That, however, didn’t work much as Nagal upped his ante and re-broke his opponent’s serve, taking a lead of 5-3.

The Czech player again found his way back into the second set and after to-and-fro got the equation to 5-5. 

At 5-5, Nagal broke Svrcina’s serve again and made it 6-5. Serving for the championship, the Czech resisted the win by saving three match points but eventually couldn’t prevent the Indian from winning the set and the match.

The final match lasted for around one hour and 44 minutes.