Rahul, Gitesh win in national ranking tennis

Rahul Singh, Gitesh Avasthi, Vanshal D'Souza and Parag Dhoke scored hard fought wins to move into the second round of qualifying of the All-India Ranking Men's Tennis Tournament at the Solaris Club here Saturday.

Of the 17 first round qualifying matches completed Saturday, the four played interesting duels before making it to the next round.

Rahul was taken into the tie-breaker by Kunj Kotak before he won 6-7(2).

Gitesh and Akash Nandwal of Madhya Pradesh were locked at 7-7 before tie-breaker was forced which Gitesh won 7-2.

Vanshal of Maharashtra too faced a similar situation against Yash Puri but managed to take the tie-breaker 7-3 to win the match 8-7(3).

Parag and Uttarakhand's Varchasva Tiwari were locked at 6-6 after 12 games before Parag broke free to take the lead and seal the match 8-6.

Qualifying first round results:

Men: Vishwajit Sangle bt Gursharan Singh 8-1; Yash Chowda bt Sukhdhanisi Singh 8-6; Prajeet Oswal bt Rushikesh Deshpande 8-3; Sarvansh Bhatia bt Vikas Choudhary 8-2; Rahul Singh bt Kunj Kotak 8-7(2); Mihir Auty bt Punit Dhoke 8-0; Gitesh Avasthi bt Akash Nandwal (MP) 8-7 (2); Aman Shah bt Abhinav Sharma 8-0; Parag Dhoke bt Varchasva Tiwari (Utr) 8-6; Parth Chivte bt Captain Parmar 8-2; Rohan Samant (Mah) bt Mahadevia Munjal 8-2; Arnav Goyal bt Vinaysheel Pandey 8-3; Vanshal D'Souza (Mah) bt Yash Puri 8-7 (7-3); Sarang Phadnis bt Tarun Reddy 8-4; Anupam Kumar bt A. Prassanna 8-2; Harshal Bharne (Mah) bt Hitesh Sharma 8-2; Satyam Vijay (AP) bt Khanderao Belsare (Mah) 8-2.