Parul disturbs seeds’ smooth sailing

New Delhi, October 18: Barring one upset in the Girl’s under-19 section, rest of the seeds proceeded to the second round of DSCL Open National (Sub-Jr) Tennis Championship here on Wednesday.

In a major upset, Parul Goswami beat sixth-seed Krushmi Chedda in a three-set encounter that lasted three hours.

Krushmi, who was 2-5 down in the first set, came back strongly to take the next three games and level the set. The set went into a tie-breker which Krushmi won 7-3.

In the second set, Goswami raced to 5-1 lead only to allow another comeback from Chedda who reduced her lead to 5-4. But this time Goswami was in no mood to let go and held her serve in the tenth game to level the match at a set each.

In the decider, Goswami was down at 2-4 but put up a spirited challenge against her seeded opponent to win the next four games and move to the next round of the competition.

In the other matches in the category, all the seeds had straight set victories over their opponents. Second seed Isha Lakhani made light work of Nansi Jharna 6-0, 6-1, in 44 minutes while third seed Priyanka Parekh marched past Satvika Saboo.

Eighth-seed Neha Singh also made the mark by easing past Nidhi Shah 7-6, 6-1, in a match that lasted two hours.

In the remaining first round matches in boys’ under-19, all seeds marched into the next round of the tournament.

Second seed Anshuman Dutta beat Anant Bhaskar 6-1, 6-2 in just over an hour, while fourth-seed Ajay Selvraj crushed M Hariprasad 6-0, 6-1 in just 50 minutes.

Fifth-seed Keshav Narsimhan beat Jitin Bishnoi 6-4, 6-4, while seventh-seed Tushar Liberhans defeated Arjun V Raghavan 6-2, 6-3, to move on to the second round.