Ramkumar Ramanathan’s winning run at the 2016 Aircel Chennai Open continued as he and N. Balaji caused an upset, by defeating fourth seed Marcus Daniel and Artem Sitak of New Zealand 2-6, 7-6, 10-5 in the first round of the Men’s Doubles.
The duo made a very slow start going 0-3 down in the opening set as a horde of unforced errors and suspect decision making let them down. Balaji in particular, looked slightly overawed by the occasion and never really looked settled. They ended up losing the first set 2-6.
With the crowd very much behind them, Ramkumar and Balaji bounced back in the second set, matching their higher ranked opponents in every rally with some tremendous forehand winners and deft play at the net. They took the set to a tie-break and came out with a hard-fought 7-6 (7-5) win.
Daniel and Sitak’s loss of momentum proved costly as they lost crucial points in the deciding tie-breaker, going down 10-5 much to the delight of a voracious crowd at Court 1 in the SDAT stadium.
Ramkumar Ramanathan will take on Alexander Kudryavtsev in the second round of the Men’s singles after his original opponent, second seed Kevin Anderson, withdrew from the tournament due to a knee injury.
Somdev Devvarman and N. Jeevan made it a double delight for India as they beat Nicholas Monroe of the United States and Hans Podlipnik-Castillo of Chile to advance into the next round of the Men’s Doubles.
The Indian duo beat the Chilean-American pair 4-6, 6-3, 10-5, battling from a set down to cap off a nerve-wracking victory.
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