Chennai Open: Ramanathan continues winning run, this time in doubles
Ramkumar Ramanathan’s winning run at the Chennai Open 2016 continued as he along with N. Balaji combined to upset the fourth seeded pair of Marcus Daniell and Artem Sitak of New Zealand 2-6, 7-6, 10-5 in the first round of the Men’s Doubles on Wednesday.
After registering an upset victory over World No.98 Daniel Gimeno-Traver in the opening round of the Men’s singles event, Ramkumar Ramanathan once again produced a scintillating performance in front of the home crowd to move into the second round of Men’s Doubles competition. The duo of Ramanathan and N Balaji started the match slowly as they trailed 0-3 in the opening with unforced errors keeping them at bay. The Indian pair had no answer for their higher-ranked opponents in the first set as they ended up losing it 2-6.
Ramanathan and Balaji lifted their game in the second set by matching the Kiwi pair shot for shot to take the set to a tie-breaker. The duo clinched the tie-breaker 7-5 to mark the second set to their name with 7-6 win.
In the deciding tie-breaker for the match, the Kiwi pair lost crucial points through errors as the Indians clinched it 10-5 to move into the second round of the tournament.
In the other match, the pair of Somdev Devvarman and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan also entered the second round of the Men’s Doubles competition after beating the pair of Nicholas Monroe of the United States and Hans Podlipnik-Castillo of Chile 4-6, 6-3, 10-5.
Somdev, who crashed out of the Men’s singles event on Tuesday, produced a spirited performance in the doubles after surrendering the first set 4-6. The Indian pair’s comeback in the second set helped them take the match to a decider to clinch a tight contest at the Court 1 in the SDAT stadium in Chennai.
In today’s matches, Ramkumar Ramanathan will take on Alexander Kudryavtsev in the second round of the Men’s singles event after the original opponent second-seeded Kevin Anderson pulled out of the event with an injury. In the Men’s Doubles event, Leander Paes and Marcel Granollers will meet Austin Krajicek of United States and Benoît Paire of France in the second round.
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