Second seeds Yuki Bhambri and Saketh Myneni defeated top seeds Anirudh Chandrasekar and Vishnu Vardhan 6-4, 6-2 in the doubles final of the $15,000 ITF men’s tennis tournament at the DLTA Complex on Friday.
It was second title in three tournaments for Saketh and Yuki who restricted themselves only to the doubles at this level, preserving themselves for singles in bigger events.
In singles, Sidharth Rawat was pushed to his competitive best by former national champion Siddharth Vishwakarma, as the top seed eventually prevailed with a 7-6(3), 6-7(3), 6-3 victory in the semifinals.
It was the third successive final entry for Rawat in the current series, and he will be looking for that elusive title when he takes on SD Prajwal Dev in the final on the morrow.
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In an entertaining contest that lasted nearly three hours, Vishwakarma failed to drive home the advantage when he led 5-3 in the first two sets. In fact, he had three set points in the first set, but the erratic spell tended to neutralise his exciting game.
It was to his credit that Vishwakarma pulled through in the tie-break in the second set, but in the climax, it was Rawat who controlled the show with his sharp game and tactical acumen.
Rawat saved two break points to hold for 3-3 in the decider, and raced away with the next three games dropping three points in all.
In the other semifinal, Prajwal Dev, who trains at the Rohan Bopanna Academy in Bengaluru, served smart and fired his sharp ground strokes with uncanny accuracy to outwit Manish Sureshkumar in about two hours, in the relatively cool evening, as the second semifinal was played after the doubles final.
Manish was uncharacteristically erratic and thus was not able to pose a meaningful challenge, even though he led 3-1 in the second set. Prajwal accelerated to the finish by winning 21 points and dropping only eight in the last five games.
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