Dharwad, Oct 19: All the seeded players lived up to their billing as they entered the quarterfinals of the ITF Dharwad Men’s World Tennis Tour 2023.
The fancied players’ march into the last eight of the USD 25,000 event was led by top seed Nick Chappell of the USA who quelled a spirited fight from Karan Singh winning the tie 6-4, 6-4 at the Dharwad District Lawn Tennis Association courts here on Thursday.
Amongst the seeded Indians, third seed Digvijay Pratap Singh, fourth seed Ramkumar Ramanathan, Sidharth Rawat (No.7) and SD Prajwal Dev (No.8) also made it to the quarterfinals.
Ramkumar, who had won the ITF Futures at the same venue nearly a decade ago found the going tough against the talented Ishaque Eqbal as the latter went 4-1 up with a break in the fourth game. However, the 28-year-old Indian Davis Cupper bounced back to level at 4. The games went with the serves until the set was decided in the tie-breaker which was contested fiercely and was settled at 8-6 in favour of the fancied player.
The second set saw Ramkumar continue in the same vein breaking his opponent’s serve in the second set to go 3-0 up. Thereafter both the players held their respective serves with Ramkumar serving out for the match in 1 hour and 28 minutes.
In another interesting duel, Karan Singh of India put up a stellar fight against the southpaw Chappell. After having sent Malaysian Mitsuki Wei Kang Leong home in a gruelling first round match in the morning, Karan didn’t show any signs of tiredness as he took on the top seed.
Both the players fought for every point until the eighth game. A couple of unforced errors cost Karan the ninth game as he went down 4-6 in the first set. Karan with a break in the second game went 3-0 up.
However, the American soon restored parity. Karan then held his serve but could not sustain the momentum as he committed a series of unforced errors, gifting his opponent the set and the match.
