Seeds fall by the wayside

It wasn't the best outing for seeded players in the ITF Futures Womens Tennis tournament as three seeds were ousted in the first round on Tuesday.

It wasn’t the best outing for seeded players in the ITF Futures Womens Tennis tournament as three seeds were ousted in the first round on Tuesday. Second seed Nidhi Chilumula,fifth seed Ankita Raina and seventh seed Rishika Sunkara were stunned during play at the R.K.Khanna Tennis Stadium,New Delhi.

Sharmada Balu is one player every seed would have liked to avoid in the 1st round when the draws came out on Sunday. Nidhi wasnt as lucky as she ran into a red-hot Sharmada in round 1. Sharmada won convincingly 6-4 6-1 in just over an hour. Nidhi didn’t appear to justify her No. 2 seeding as she made a series of unforced errors that were compounded by a strangely defensive style of play. Sharmada impressed with strong groundstrokes and capitalised on an opponent permanently on the backfoot. She now faces Wu Ho Ching of Hong Kong in the 2nd round.

Rising youngster S. Peddi Reddy was just too powerful for the 7th seed Rishika and blew her off court 6-2 6-2. Reddy was in no mood to do Rishika any favours and maintained the high level of intensity in her game right from start to finish and didn’t allow Rishika to stage a comeback in the match. While Chilumula and Sunkara’s defeats were entirely one sided,Ankita Raina held her own but was eventually overwhelmed by Shweta Rana 6-4 7-6 (6).

Rushmi Chakravarthi ran out of steam and lost to talented youngster Natasha Palha in a hard fought match. Natasha won 1-6 6-2 6-2 in the longest match of the day. There were few worries for Rutuja Bhosale who eased past Yu Xuan Liu of China 6-2 6-1. Bhosale is in the race to finish ahead of her peers in the next two months and possibly pair up with Sania Mirza in the London Olympic Games doubles event. With three more ITF tournaments lined up in the Capital before the team is selected for the Olympics,the 16-year-old is hoping to get into some sort of momentum to be in contention for the coveted spot.

Other Results: Eetee Maheta bt Casey Robinson 6-3 6-1; Evgeniya Svintsova bt Ashmitha Easwaram 6-3 6-0 ; Ho Ching Wu bt Manya Nagpal 6-2 6-2; Simran Kaur Sethi bt Amrita Mukherjee 6-2 6-1

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