Thaindian News

Bangalore, June 11 (IANS) Qualifier Warit Sornbutnark from Thailand prevailed over the eighth seeded Francesco Vilardo of Italy in a baseline duel that lasted two hours, 41 minutes, 3-6, 6-2, 7-6(6) to enter the second round of the $10,000 Toyota Open ITF Men’s Futures tennis tournament here Monday.

After splitting the two sets, Warit led 2-0 in the decider, but dropped serve in the third game and it eventually led to the tie-breaker. Warit, trailing 1-3, took four points in a row for 5-3 before clinching the issue when Vilardo, trailing 6-7, committed a double fault.

Meanwhile, top seed Ti-Chen from Chinese Taipei crushed Scott Poudziunas of Australia 6-2, 6-1, in just 55 minutes while third seed Vijayant Malik, in a repeat of the Mysore Open second round clash, defeated the local lad and qualifier Vinod Gowda 6-1, 6-2 in 73 minutes.

Malik with his strong serve and deep ground strokes, proved too hot for Gowda who caved in easily while Ti-Chen provede too good for an error-prone Scott.

Ti-Chen, attacking brilliantly, raced to 4-0 lead in both the sets which virtually sealed the match in his favour. Scott was unable to find his rhythm as he hit out repeatedly besides committing quite a few double faults as well.

The results (Prefix denotes seed, Indian unless mentioned):

Singles (first round): 7-Kittiphong Wachiramanowong (THA) bt Yogesh Phogat 6-4, 6-2; 3-Vijayant Malik bt Vinod Gowda 6-1, 6-2; Warit Sornbutnark (THA) bt 8-Francesco Vilardo (ITA) 3-6, 6-2, 7-6 (6); Abhijeet Tiwari bt Krishik Divakar 6-1, 6-2; 1-Ti-Chen (TPE) bt Scott Puodziunas (AUS) 6-2, 6-1; Kunal Anand bt Aaditya Tewari 6-4, 6-3.

Doubles (first round): Elwin Antony / Fariz Mohammed bt Tejas Chaukulkar / Venkat Iyer 7-6 (3), 6-3; 2-Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan / Ranjeet Virali-Murugesan bt Sagar Ahuja / Vishwanath Savadi 6-4, 6-2; 3-Vijayant Malik / Kaza Vinayak Sharma bt Krishna Karsolia / Neishit Vakil 6-1, 6-2; 4-Abhijeet Tiwari / Ashwin Vijayragavan bt Kenny Bun (CAM) / Saurabh Patil (IND) 6-2, 6-3; Krishik Divakar / Sagar Manjanna bt Ravi Shankar Sathiyaraj Mitra / Ganga Singh 6-1, 3-6, 10-6; 1-N.Sriram Balaji / Arun- Prakash Rajagopalan bt Sidharth Rawat / Aaditya Tewari 6-2, 7-5.