ITF Juniors: Boys singles 2nd seed Sacchitt goes down to France's Erhard

France's Mathys Erhard pulled off an upset of sorts beating second seed Indian Sacchitt Sharma 4-6, 6-3, 7-6(5) in the first round of the boys singles under-18 ITF Juniors tennis championship at the Dakshin Kalikata Sansad on Tuesday.

Sacchitt secured the opening set by a close 6-4 in the first 45 minutes. In the second set, Mathys got a crucial break at 3-1 as he dropped just a point in that fifth game, from where he held the lead and eventually leveled the match at one set all.

In the decider, Sacchitt was enjoying an early break in the second game itself, as he went 2-0 up but made a series of unforced errors and dropped serve in the very next.

In the sixth game again, Sacchitt got a lucky break, thereby taking the score to a 4-2 in his favour but faltered yet again and dropped the next service game.

The set progressed with hold of serves thereafter and entered into a tie breaker, where Mathys got a little luckier than the crowd favourite Indian, as the former won the tie breaker by a nail-biting 7-5.

Meanwhile, sixth seed Rishabh Sharda also failed to enter the pre-quarter finals of the boys Singles as he went down fighting to Soufiane El Mesbahi of Morocco, ranked much lower to him as per the ITF ranking charts.

Sharda lost by 6-2,1-6,1-6 in one hour and 45 minutes.

--IANS

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