New Delhi: It turned out to be a classic case of the seedings committee getting it right as all four seeds in the Men’s Singles section rolled into the semi-finals of the Fenesta Open National Tennis Championship on Thursday.
Top seed Sriram Balaji led the charge as he dismantled Siddharth Vishwakarma 6-4, 6-4 in a match where the Tamil Nadu player underlined his superiority by playing percentage tennis. On another hot day, Balaji, who came through the grind of qualifiers, showed why he is rated in 400-range on the ATP computer.
There was an interesting match on view in the Men’s last eight when defending champion Vishnu Vardhan used all the weapons in his game to outslug a cantankerous Alex Solanki 6-3, 7-5.
The afternoon heat was beating down and Alex Solanki was restless as his serve deserted him. In between, he even tried an underarm serve but it did nothing to change his form today.
In the penultimate game, Alex fired double faults when he needed to be consistent. That was the chance Vishnu wanted and then served out the match with assurance.
Earlier in the day, Solanki had also lost in the Boys Under 18 section.
Third seed Mohit Jayaprakash also needed to use his skill and guile as he beat Sidharth Rawat 6-3, 6-4 while old warhorse VM Ranjeet hardly broke a sweat as he dumped Shaikh Abdullah 6-2, 6-1.
In the Women’s Singles category, there were no major surprises as defending champion Prerna Bhambri, the fourth seed toyed with Sowjanya Bavisetti. The Delhi lady won 6-1, 6-4.The top seed Snehadevi Reddy had a tough start against Eetee Maheta but finally got the better with 1-6,6-3,6-1.
Another Delhi girl, Shweta Rana had bad luck as she lost 5-7, 3-6 to Samitha C Chamarthi in the quarter-finals. Shweta was familiar with the settings but on this day she made too many errors.
Pranjala Yadlapalli looked sharp as she toyed with Riya Bhatia 6-4,6-0 in a match where there were few chances for the latter.
Quarter Final Results:
Mens Singles:
Vishnu Vardhan (Seed 2) bt Alex Solanki 6-3,7-5; Mohit M Jayaprakash (Seed 3) bt Siddharth Rawat 6-3,6-4;VM Ranjeet (Seed 4) bt Shaikh Abdullah 6-2,6-1’; Sriram Balaji (Seed 1) bt Siddharth Vishwakarma 6-4,6-4
Womens Singles:
Prerna Bhambri (Seed 4) bt Sowjanya Bavisetti (Seed 5) 6-1,6-4;Pranjala Yadlapalli bt Riya Bhatia 6-4,6-0; Samitha C Chamarthi bt Shweta Rana 7-5,6-3; Snehadevi Reddy (Seed 1) bt Eetee Maheta 1-6,6-3,6-1
Boys Under 18
BR Nikshep (Seed 2) bt Abhinav Sanjeev 6-4,6-4;Parikshit Somani (Seed 4) bt Alex Solanki 3-6,6-3,6-3;Nitin K Sinha (Seed 5) bt Abhimany Vannemreddy 6-7(5),6-1,6-4;Aryan Goveas (Seed 1) bt Manish Sureshkumar 6-4,1-6,7-6(6)
Girls Under 18
Sathwika Sama (Seed 2) bt Vaidehi Chaudhari 6-3,6-1;Zeel Desai (Seed 1) bt Jennifer Luikham 6-3,3-6,6-4;Mahak Jain (Seed 3) bt Akanksha Bhan 6-1,6-1; Prinkle Singh bt Lalitha Devarakonda 2-6,7-5,6-2
