Indians had a good run at the International Tennis Federation tournaments in the country this week. Ankita Raina, seeded fourth, reached the final of the $25,000 tournament in Gwalior while top seed Prajnesh Gunneswaran also reached the final of the $15,000 event in Chandigarh, where the men’s doubles pair of Arjun Kadhe and Vijay Sundar Prashanth lifted the title on Friday.
Raina, India’s top ranked WTA singles player, sailed through to the final after her semi-final opponent Yana Sizikova of Russia retired with the Indian leading 6-2, 4-0. In the final she will face France’s Amandine Hesse, who is seeded second. She beat Tereza Mihalikova of Slovakia 6-4, 6-2.
Great day for #indiantennis @ankita_champ in finals of 25K #ITF event in Gwalior #arjunkadhe and #vijaysundarprashant win 2nd doubles title in a row at $15K event at Chandigarh and @PrajneshGP in the singles final way to go
— Sunder Iyer (@siyer30) March 16, 2018
Hesse has a positive head-to-head record over the Indian, beating Raina at home the last time they met at the WTA 125 tournament in Mumbai. The French player won 6-3, 7-6 (4) in the quarter-finals in November 2017.
In the F3 Futures tournament in Chandigarh, Prajnesh beat eight seed Manuel Pena Lopez of Argentina 6-1,6-4 in an hour and 20 minutes. He will play Vietnamese top seed Nam Hoang Ly in the final, who got the better of Spanish second seed Carlos Boluda-Purkiss 6-4, 6-2 in the other semi-final.
The doubles final was an all-Indian affair with Kadhe and Vijay Sundar beating Mohit Mayur Jayaprakash and Vinayak Sharma Kaza 6-3, 6-1. The pair of Kadhe and Vijay Sundar had lifted the doubles title in F2 Futures event at Bhubaneswar earlier this month, where Kadhe was also the singles runner-up.
In the competitions outside the country, Indians didn’t fare well this week.
Sumit Nagal, who was the top seed at the F6 Futures tournament in Spain, went down 6-1, 4-6, 6-4 in the second round to Brazil’s Joao Menezes.
On the Challenger circuit, Divij Sharan and partner Scott Lipsky beat the India’s Purav Raja and Treat Huey 6-4, 7-6(6) in the first round at the Irving Tennis Classic in USA. However, they went down to fourth seeds Nicholas Monroe and Jackson Withrow 6-3, 6-2 in the quarter-finals.
In Shenzhen, top seeds N Sriram Balaji and Christopher Rungkat lost in the quarter-finals 7-5, 4-6, 8-10 to Cheng-Peng Hsieh and Rameez Junaid.
