Geoffrey Blancaneaux of France outplayed the second-seeded Adam Walton of Australia 6-3, 6-0 in the pre-quarterfinals of the Dafa News $82,000 Delhi Open Challenger tennis tournament at the DLTA Complex on Thursday.
Walton had lost the nerve-wracking final of the last tournament in Pune in the third set tie-break against Valentin Vacherot of Monaco, after having won the doubles title with Tristan Schoolkate.
However, there was no trace of such form in the slow conditions as Walton struggled to find his rhythm right through the match. In contrast, Blancaneaux who had lost in the first round of the Bengaluru and Pune Challenger events over the last fortnight, was quite fluent and thrived in the conditions to assert his game, with strong serves and fluent strokes.
In the quarterfinals, Blancaneaux will play qulaifier Philip Sekulic of Australia.
In doubles, second seeds Arjun Kadhe and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan fought back to stay in contention against Constantin Kouzmine and Maxime Janvier, before the Frenchmen handled the climax nicely to race to a 7-6(4), 6-7(4), [10-6] victory in the quarterfinals.
The Indian pair led 4-2 in the super tie-break, but after being on par at 5-5, the French pulled away with a better game.
The Indian challenge ended with this loss, as the other Indian pair of Nitin Kumar Sinha and Manish Sureshkumar, playing the quarterfinals directly owing to the luck of the draw, were beaten 6-4, 6-4 by Jakob Schnaitter and Mark Wallner, the Germans who had knocked out the top seeds Saketh Myneni and Ramkumar Ramanathan.
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