Karishma works a miracle against Geeta

Calcutta, Mar 6: Seventh seed Geeta Manohar fell by the wayside while top ranked Sai Jayalakshmi and men's second seed Nitin kirtane tamed...

Calcutta, Mar 6: Seventh seed Geeta Manohar fell by the wayside while top ranked Sai Jayalakshmi and men’s second seed Nitin kirtane tamed their opening round opponents in the Senior National Grasscourt Tennis championship on Monday.

Karishma Patel of Gujarat caused the day’s only upset when she humbled Andhra Pradesh’s Geeta Manohar 7-6 (7-4), 6-3 to sail into the second round at the CCFC courts.

Maharashtra’s Kirtane took 50 minutes to breeze past Anand Radhakrishnan of West Bengal 6-1 6-1 while Tamil Nadu girl Jayalakshmi needed eight minutes less to outsmart Maharashtra’s J Nancy 6-1, 6-0.

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Women’s second seed Rushmi Chakravarthi of Tamil Nadu also had an easy opening round campaign, vanquishing West Bengal’s Tanya Ahuja 6-0, 6-0.

Seventh seed Vasudeva Reddy of Andhra Pradesh got a scare before finally overwhelming Maharashtra’s Vijendra Laad 6-4 6-7 (3-7) in a gruelling 130-minute men’s singles encounter.

Kirtane played true to his reputation to open up a 5-0 lead in the opening game, breaking Radhakrishnan in the second and fourth games. Though Radhakrishnan retained his serve in the sixth game, Kirtane took the next game to win the set 6-1.

The Pune-based player continued the good work in the second set, demolishing Radhakrishnan’s serve in the first, fifth and seventh games to claim the set 6-1 and wrap up the tie.

Results (first round)

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Men’s singles (first round): A Ismail (Mah) bt Y Arafat (AP) 6-3 6-3, P Narendran (TN) bt P Chaturvedi (Del) 6-4,7-5, V Reddy (AP) bt V Laad (Mah) 6-4 6-7 (3-7) 6-4, M Mahadevan (Mah) bt B Xavier (Mah) 6-2 4-6 7-5, V Kannan (Del) bt V Sewa (WB) 6-3 6-2, R Sridhar (TN) bt K Shukla (UP) 6-3 6-1, V Sridhar (TN) bt S Ganesh (TN) 6-4 6-1, S Panja (WB) bt K Tembe (Mah) 6-4 6-3, R Bopanna (Mah) bt S Shivshankar (Kar) 6-3 7-6 (7-4), N Kirtane (Mah) bt A Radhakrishnan (WB) 6-1 6-1.

Women’s singles: S Jayalakshmi (TN) bt J Nancy (Mah) 6-1 6-0, S Kanury (TN) bt A Dimi (TN) 6-1 6-2, K Patel (Guj) bt G Manohar (AP) 7-6 (7-4) 6-3, P Yadav (UP) bt K Ahuja (WB) 6-2 6-1, SK Tara (Kar) bt R Parekh (WB) 6-1 6-2, A Venkataraman (Kar) bt M Chowdhury (WB) 6-0 6-0, L Pereira (Mah) bt P Mitra (WB) 6-0 6-0, O Majumdar (WB) bt S Banerjee (WB) 6-0 6-0, P Parekh (WB) bt MP Preetham (TN) 0-3 (conceded), R Tulpule (Mah) bt S Chowdhury (WB) 6-0 6-0, J Randhawa (Pun) bt M Kamini (TN) 6-1 6-1, S Swapna (TN) bt S Thyagrajan (TN) 6-1 7-6 (7-1), R Chakravarthi (TN) bt T Ahuja (WB) 6-0 6-0.