Manoj, Natekar rally to advance

CHENNAI, April 4: Manoj Mahadevan went through a strange roller-coaster ride before emerging a 4-6, 6-1, 6-4 winner over Myles Wakefield of ...

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CHENNAI, April 4: Manoj Mahadevan went through a strange roller-coaster ride before emerging a 4-6, 6-1, 6-4 winner over Myles Wakefield of South Africa in the first round of the qualifying event of the Gold Flake Open Tennis at the Nungambakkam stadium, here on Saturday.

The tall, 12th standard student of Sherwood Hall school in the city took some time to settle down but Wakefield capitilised on the former’s errors to claim the first set 6-4.

Hereabouts, there came about a startling turn in the fortunes of the players. Manoj put the diffidence of the first set behind him and, coming up to the net more often, he broke Wakefield in the fourth and sixth games to take the set 6-1.

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The decider looked to be a no contest when Manoj, continuing his splendid form, raced to a 5-0 lead breaking Wakefield three times. Now, the pendulum swung again. Wakefield broke Manoj and then held serve in the ninth to narrow the gap to 4-5.

The Chennai schoolboy, however, refused to be unnerved by Wakefield’s fightback. Hekept his cool on serve in the 10th game and reached his third match point. This time, he did not falter and clinched the match when Wakefield’s backhand service return went wide.

If Manoj almost let Wakefield off the hook, on an adjoining court, Mustafa Ghouse did let Gaurav Natekar off the hook. The well-built Maharashtra lad led 7-5, 5-1 and even had a match point at this stage. Natekar, also from Maharashtra, however, kept his composure to draw level at 5-5.

The former Davis Cup player duly took the set 7-5, but again in the decider, he faced a mini crisis, being down 2-4. However, broke Ghouse twice to clinch the set 6-4 and the match (5-7, 7-5, 6-4) after a duel under the noonday sun that lasted 155 minutes.

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These two matches cornered most of the attention since the other four were one-sided. National champion Marcus Hilpert breezed past Vishal Uppal 6-0, 6-2, while Rishi Sridhar brushed aside Vijayendra Laad 6-3, 6-3. On centre court, Sandeep Kirtane scored a 6-4, 6-2 victory over David Dilucia ofUSA while Max Mirnyi of Belarus faced few problems in completing a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Sander Groen of Holland.