India wildcard entrants Vishnu Vardhan and Suraj Prabodh lost their respective men’s singles matches in straight sets to crash out in the opening round of the Bengaluru Open on Tuesday, reported PTI.
Coming into the tournament after an early exit at the Pune Challenger, Vardhan lost 3-6, 3-6 against Spain’s Mario Vilella Martinez. Prabodh was shown the door by Sweden’s Elias Ymer 4-6, 6-7.
“He [Suraj] was getting lot of balls back and was really fighting hard,” said Elias. “He also showed some spunk in his approach in the second set.”
Suraj, who played the Australian Open Juniors, was the runner-up in the recently-held National Championship. Elias kept his cool and waited for his chances to smash winners after he was lagging behind the Indian at one point of time.
Meanwhile, top seed Blaz Kavcic of Slovenia defeated Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Tomislav Brkic in a tough three-setter to enter the second round. Kavcic had to dig deep to get past Brkic 6-2, 6-7, 7-6.