Switzerland's Antoine-Michele Alexeev knocked out third seed Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan in three sets en route to the quarter-finals of the MCC SRS ITF men's Futures tennis tournament here on Wednesday.
Nedunchezhiyan started well to break Alexeev in the very second game with strong forehand returns and then held his serve for the second time to take a 3-0 lead which he maintained to win the first set 6-3.
In the second set, Alexeev began to serve smartly and broke Nedunchezhiyan's rhythm. The only break came in the fourth game when Alexeev returned with a plan of putting pressure on Nedunchezhiyan's backhand which enabled him to break the latter's serving on the first deuce.
The third set saw a seesaw struggle as advantage changed hands a few times. Nedunchezhiyan led 3-0 only to be broken twice to allow Alexeev to go ahead 4-3.
Nedunchezhiyan came back to lead 5-4. At this stage Alexeev raised his game and wore him down to reel off the next three games, allowing Nedunchezhiyan only three points, to win 7-5 and move into the quarter-finals.
Six of the eight seeds made progress. The top seed and Davis Cupper Saketh Myneni, who had spent over three hours on court Tuesday, found his rhythm served powerfully and intelligently to dispatch wild card entrant Elwin Anthony without much ado.
The results (Round 2): Antoine-Michel Alexeev (Sui) bt 3-Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan 3-6, 6-3, 7-5; M Descotte (Arg) bt 6-Karunuday Singh 6-4, 4-6, 6-4; 4-Vijay Sundar Prashanth, bt Loic Perret,A (Sui) 6-4, 6-3; 1-Saketh Myneni bt Elwin Antony 6-2, 6-1; 8-Yannick Thivant (Fra) bt R Suraj PrabodhA 6-4, 6-7(6), 6-3; 5-Ivan Gakhov (Rus) bt Sai Kumar Mukund 6-1, 6-1; 7-Ranjeet Virali-Murugesan bt Sidharth Rawat 7-6(1), 6-4; 2-N Sriram Balaji bt Mikhail Korovin (Rus) 7-5, 5-7, 6-4.
