Rawat, Bava post wins; local lad Suresh bows out

Second-seed Sidharth Rawat of India beat Li-Wie Tan of Taipei 6-3, 6-1 to reach the singles second round in the 8th S R Subramaniam Memorial ITF Men's Futures tennis tournament here today.
Also, fifth-seed Haadin Bava moved up with a straight-forward 6-4, 6-4 win over Tejas Chaukulkar.
While Rawat played solid tennis and advanced with ease, three other singles matches on the opening day of the tournament were hard fought ones.
Jayesh Pungliya ousted Dalwinder Singh in a three-set affair which lasted two hours and eleven minutes, winning a tie-breaker in the third set.
In another match, 27-year-old Vijayant Malik of Haryana played an all-round game to oust a determined Kazuma Kawachi of Japan 6-3, 7-6.

Malik won the first set with the help of a single break in the 8th game. In the second set the Japanese led 4-2 before the Indian fought back, with some smart play, overcoming a set point against him in the process.

In the tie-break, Kawachi held a set point again but Malik held firm with percentage play to seal a win.
The match between 19-year-old Aryan Goveas and Dakshineshwar Suresh, who recently won the National claycourt junior title, was a long-drawn affair with the former fighting back from being a set down to win 3-6, 7-6 (15), 6-3 in 2 hours and 33 minutes.

In the first set, the lanky 17-year-old Suresh played steady tennis and capitalised on his rival's inconsistency.
The second set was an intense battle with the two players holding serve with varying degrees of comfort. In the tie-break, Goveas trailed 2-5 before bouncing back and edging out the local lad despite facing a handful of set points.
Suresh appeared to tire in the deciding set and dropped serve in the third game and even took a medical break. Goveas held his nerve and closed out the match to advance to the pre-quarterfinals where he awaits the winner of the match between seventh-seed Cameron Silverman (USA) and qualifier Jessy Kalambay (Switzerland).

In the doubles event, brothers P C Vignesh and C Anirudh teamed up to upset third-seeds Yu Hsiang Chiu of Taipei and Kelsey Stevenson of Canada 6-4, 6-7, 10-6.
Results (Indians unless otherwise specified): Singles: Aryan Goveas bt Dhakshineswar Suresh 3-6, 7-6 (15), 6-3; Cing-Yang Meng (TPE) bt Fahad Mohammed 6-3, 6-1; Jayesh Pungliya bt Dalwinder Singh 6-2, 4-6, 7-6(1).
Haadin Bava (5) bt Tejas Chaukulkar 6-4, 6-4; Vijayant Malik bt Kazuma Kawachi (Japan) 6-3, 7-6(6); Sidharth Rawat bt Li-Wie Tan (Taipei) 6-3, 6-1.
Doubles: Anvit Bendre/Arjun Kadhe bt Sathi Reddy Chirala/Cameron Silverman (US) 6-3, 6-4; Ankit Chopra/Carlos Jose Cuevas (Chile) bt Parikshit Somani/Dhakshineswar Suresh 3-6, 6-1, (10-1); Seong-Gook Oh/Jae Won Yun (Korea) bt Aryan Goveas/Jayesh Pungliya 3-6, 7-5, 10-2.