The top seeded pair of Divij Sharan and Artem Sitak bowed out of the ATP Atlanta Open after losing their first round in straight sets to Romain Arneodo and Jeremy Chardy.
The Indo-Kiwi pair, who made the Wimbledon quarter-finals, lost 4-6, 5-7 to the unseeded Monaco-Frech duo. The defeat leaves Purav Raja as the only Indian surviving in the hard court tournament.
Raja and Ken Skupski are up against Taylor Frtiz and Camron Norrie in the quarter-finals. Leander Paes and his American partner Jamie Cerretani had also made a first round exit from the tournament.
India’s challenge had already ended in the singles event with first round defeats of Ramkumar Ramanathan and qualifier Prajnesh Gunneswaran. At the Swiss Open in Gstaad, Vishnu Vardhan and N Sriram Balaji went down in a tough battle to Guido Andreozzi and Jaume Munar. The Indian duo went down 7-6(9), 3-6, [9-11].
The Indian challenge ended at the Jiangxi Open WTA tournament as well with the pre-quarterfinal exit of Karman Kaur Thandi. The unseeded Indian went down to sixth seed Chinese, Zheng Saisai, 4-6, 0-6. Karman’s compatriot Prarthana Thombare and Jacqueline Cako lost 4-6, 4-6 to the Chinese duo of Xinyu Jiang and Qianhui Tang in the doubles quarter-final.
