Anning Challenger | Ramkumar Ramanathan loses in quarterfinal to Kamil Majchrzak

04/19/2019

Ramkumar Ramanathan’s campaign in China ended on a sour note as he lost in straight sets to Poland ace Kamil Majchrzak in the quarter-final of the challenger. Majchrzak would be facing top Indian seed Prajnesh Gunneswaran next, who defeated Serbia’s Nikola Milojević yesterday to book his berth.

Playing against an opponent who is 27 ranks better than Ramanathan in world rankings was always going to be a challenge and the match panned out to be exactly the same. After winning his first service game, Majchrzak managed to break Ramanathan in the second game of the first set.

The pressure was on very early on the Indian ace and he could never really recover from it and got broken yet again in the sixth game where he could save just one break point. Majchrzak won the last game to seal an easy 6-1 win over the Indian in the first set.

It was a do or die set for Ramanathan now and he looked unprepared for his opponent. He was broken in the very first game of the second set and again in the third game letting Majchrzak lead 3-0 after three games. However, just when all hopes were lost, Ramanathan broke Majchrzak in the fourth game.

It might have been the motivation needed for the Indian, for he broke the Polish player again in the eighth game to enforce a tie-breaker. It was relatively well with both winning their serves before Majchrzak broke Ramanathan in the ninth serve to lead 5-4 before eventually winning it 6(4) – 7(7).

Majchrzak would be next facing Prajnesh Gunneswaran in the semi-final on Saturday.