Kaza survives a scare in Mysuru Open tennis

Seventh seed Vinayak Sharma Kaza made heavy weather of his first round match, squandering three match points in the second set before prevailing over Ronit Singh Bisht in three sets in the Sobha ITF Mysuru Open tennis tournament here on Tuesday.

Top seed Ramkumar Ramnathan along with second seed Karunuday Singh, Olympian and former Davis Cupper Vishnu Vardhan and Ranjeet Virali-Murugesan made swift progress into the second round with straightforward victories.

Another impressive winner was Pune boy Anvit Bendre, who ousted Sandeep Choudhary in straight sets, the latter showing some determination in the second set which went into the tie-breaker.

Kaza claimed the first set 6-4 against 1288-ranked Bisht. The players held serve in the second and the Andhra player raced away to a 6-3 lead in the consequent tie-breaker. However, unforced errors saw Bisht leveling at 6 and 7 before winning the second set.

That seemed to have unsettled Kaza who again was taken to the tie-breaker in the decider. However, the seventh seed had shrugged off the indifferent form to clinch the deciding tie-breaker.

Results: (Prefix denotes seeding, Indians unless stated):

Singles (1st round): 1-Ramkumar Ramanathan bt Aditya Deswal 6-3, 6-4; 7-Vinayak Sharma bt Ronit Singh Bisht 6-4, 6-7(7), 7-6(3); 8-Vishnu Vardhan bt Jayesh Pungliya 6-3, 6-3; Anvit Bendre bt Sandeep Choudhary 6-1, 7-6(7); 2-Karunuday Singh bt Akash Wagh 6-2, 6-1; 3-Ranjeet Virali-Murugesan bt Chandril Sood 6-3, 6-4; Lakshit Sood bt Aditya Tewari 6-3, 6-3.

Doubles: Bhavesh Gour / Sidarth Rawat bt 3-Anvit Bendre/Akash Bendre 6-3, 7-5; Jui-Chen Hung (Tpe)/Sasi Kumar Mukund bt Haadin Bava / Shahbaaz Khan 7-5, 3-6, 10-7; 2-Mohit Mayur/Vinayak Sharma bt SD Prajwal Dev/Suraj Probodh 6-2, 7-6(7); Jayesh Pungliya / Nitin Kumar Sinha bt Sahil Gaware/Kunal Vazirani 6-4, 7-5; 1-Ramkumar Ramnathan/Ranjeet Virali-Murugesan bt Shotaro Goto (Jpn)/Kazuma Kawachi (Jpn) 6-3, 7-6 (4).