BENGALURU, Feb 17: Indian campaign in the men’s singles event of the Bengaluru Open ATP Challenger ended on Thursday after wildcard entrants Arjun Kadhe and Sidharth Rawat went down fighting in their respective second round matches here.
While Kadhe lost to third seed Enzo Couacaud of France 6-7 (7), 5-7, Rawat suffered 4-6, 6-2, 4-6 defeat to Swiss rival Antoine Bellier.
However, two Indian pairs entered the semifinals in the doubles event.
Saketh Myneni and Ramkumar Ramanathan got past Ukrainian-German pair of Vladyslav Orlov and Kai Wehnelt 6-4, 7-6 (3), N Sriram Balaji and Vishnu Vardhan beat the duo of Markos Kalovelonis (Great Britain) and Toshihide Matsui (Japan) 6-3, 4-6, 11-9.
Kadhe compensated his singles loss by pairing up with Alexander Erler of Austria and defeated the Indian duo of SD Prajwal Dev and Niki Kaliyanda Poonacha 6-1, 3-6, 10-6 to make it to the last four.
In the singles match, Kadhe did not show any kind of jitters in his match against Enzo. Despite being broken in the opening game and the fifth game to trail 1-4, he fought back by breaking Enzo’s serve in the sixth and 10th games to restore parity.
As the issue was being settled via a tie-break, Kadhe, with just a point to win the set 6-2, squandered away the opportunity, losing the tie-break 7-9, thanks to his own mistakes that gave his opponent an edge.
The second set saw both the players holding their serves until the fifth game before they broke each other for the next four games.
Despite the 11 double faults by Enzo against four by Kadhe, the Indian could not take advantage of his opponent’s mistakes as he was broken once again in the 12th game to lose the set and the match.
Rawat, meanwhile, traded blow for blow in his pre-quarterfinal match against Bellier until the 10th game where he made two double faults to lose serve and the set.
The Indian played some flawless tennis in the second set, which he won with two breaks in the fifth and seventh games.
The final set was an exact replica of the opening set, only this time, Bellier was brilliant with his ground strokes and broke Rawat’s serve in the 10th game to grab a spot in the quarterfinals. (PTI)
Follow our WhatsApp channel