ITF Manipal Open Tennis Tournament – 2011: Day 2

By Subhas Marne
Bellevision Media Network

Manipal, 25 May 2011: The Bangalore lad, Vinod Gowda caused a flutter in the Corporation Bnak-ITF Open Manipal tennis championship when he knocked out a much experienced rival from Hong Kong, Wing Lun Lam 6-4,6-3 and thus earned his first ATP point of his career. Gowda, who is a product of the High Performance Tennis Training Centre of the KSLTA, who was tentative with his approach, staved off his rival’ s challenge in the first set and in the second set, he played a fluent and attacking game to overpower Lam. He faces 3rd seed Niki Takuto of Japan tomorrow in the pre quarter finals.

 

Vinod Gowda

 

Rohan Gujjar

 

Kaza Vinayak Sharma

 

Abhijith Tiwari

 

Abhijeet Tiwari caused the first upset of the tournament when he beat the eighth seed, Vivek Shokeen 6-2, 4-6, 6-2. But the top two seeds, Rajneet Virali Murugesan and Rohan Gajjar, registered contrasting wins. Ranjeet, who returned from Germany last night, where he plays club tennis, proved too good for Kunal Anand and won 6-2,6-2 while, Gajjar, wiped off a 0-3 deficit in the first set to beat Aji Selvaraj 7-6 (0), 6-0. The fourth seed, Vijayant Malik beat Suresh Krishna 6-3, 6-4. Sagar Manjanna, another wild card from Karnataka, however went down to former Junior National Champion Sumit Shinde 3-6,4-6 after apparently having trouble with a shoulder problem.

 

Doubles: Tejasvi Rao & Vikram Reddy bt Niraj elangovan & Fariz Mohammed 6-1, 6-1; P.C.Vignsh & Kaza Vinayak Sharma bt Sumit Shinde & Gagan Verma 6-2, 6-4.