Indian singles challenge ends at Bengaluru Open

Bengaluru: The Indian challenge in the singles event of the on-going Bengaluru Open ended without much ado with all the six players losing their respective pre-quarterfinal matches with the top-ranked Indians Prajnesh Gunneswaran and Sumit Nagal leading the outward march.

While the seventh seed Prajnesh threw in the towel to a lowly ranked Benjamin Bonzi of France 6-7 (5), 0-6, eighth seed Sumit crashed out losing to 11th seed Blaz Rola of Slovenia 3-6, 3-6.

The other Indians to be shown the door were 17th seed Ramkumar Ramanathan, Saketh Myneni, a wild card entrant Niki Poonacha and Sidharth Rawat, with only Myneni’s match being stretched to three sets.

There was some cheer in the Indian camp with Indian tennis legend Leander Paes who is in his last year of professional tennis calling it “The Last Roar”, entering the semifinal with Australian partner Matthew Abden who combined to beat third seeds and champions of an ATP event last week Andre Goransson of Sweden and Christopher Rungkat of Indonesia 7-5, 0-6, 10-7.

Earlier, Myneni had combined with Matt Reid of Australia and won a hard-fought battle against the top-seeded pair of Cheng-Peng Hsieh of Taipei and Denys Molchanov of Ukraine 3-6, 6-4, 10-8 to enter the last four along with Purav Raja and Ramkumar Ramanathan.

The all Indian pair recorded a straight-set 6-4, 6-4 victory over the Portugal-Serbian pair of Frederico Silva and Nikola Milojevic.

The Prajnesh-Bonzi match was expected to be a one-sided affair in favour of the Indian. However, it turned the other way.

“I was not comfortable coming into the match. I did not play as I wanted to. I am still trying to figure out what was wrong. I was just able to co-ordinate my movements. I wanted to play aggressive shots but most of the time I was defending. I should have broken him a little earlier in the first set. And after going 4-1 up with a down the line shot, I thought I was back into my elements. He still played well but I did not do anything to match him,” said Prajnesh after his exit.

Bonzi who is currently ranked 368th in the world broke Prajnesh in the second game of the first set but immediately lost his serve as the set was decided via tie-breaker. The Frenchman did not give an error-prone Prajnesh a semblance of a chance as he closed out the second set in just 21 minutes with three breaks in the first, third and fifth.

“I am very happy to reach the quarterfinal. It is difficult to control the ball here because of the altitude hence my only was to keep the ball in play as much as possible,” said an elated Bonzi.

Meanwhile, Italian Thomas Fabbiano had come with a reputation of having registered two epic wins in 2019 defeating World No. 6 Stefanos Tsitsipas to reach the 2nd round of Wimbledon Open and beating World No. 4 Dominic Thiem in the 1st round of the US Open, just last year.

Today at the KSLTA, he did face some resistance from one of India’s leading player Saketh Myneni but eventually lived up to his billing of 9th seed here. The 30-year-old registered a 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 win to enter the quarterfinals of the US $ 162,500 prize money event.