ITF tennis: Top seed Bhambri through to second round

But up 4-2 in the second set,Bhambri committed a series of unforced errors including a double fault at love-all to drop his serve at love.

Marsalek too grew in confidence,and troubled the Indian with bouncy top-spun serves into the ad court. Bhambri shanked a couple of returns wide,and once stepped inside and netted an uncontrolled forehand,late on his stroke and unbalanced,spinning in midair.

Forced into a tie-break,Bhambri held his nerve after a couple more dicey points to take it 8-6.

“I think it was really my errors that brought him back in the game,” Bhambri said after the game.

“I had break points at 4-1,and at 4-2 gave him easy points. You can’t drop serve at love like that. But yeah,he definitely raised his level as well. He served well,and put a lot of balls on court. But I always felt in control,and I was at no point trailing. I just had to push him a little bit more.”

Asked about the state of his knee,which has troubled him on and off for the entire year,Bhambri said it was in good shape.

“I had a good week-and-a half,two weeks,break,” he said. “Winning in Lagos (another $15000 ITF tournament at the end of October) has given me a lot of confidence,and a lot of belief in myself.”

In other first-round matches,Japanese second seed Junn Mitsuashi had to retire with a recurrence of a leg injury when he was trailing 5-7,0-1 against Spaniard Ivan Gualda,while fourth seed Karan Rastogi survived a scare from N Sriram Balaji,beating him 6-4,6-7(1),6-4.

Results:

VM Ranjeet (6) bt Jaime Garcia (Spain) 7-5,6-1; Ivan Gualda (Spain) bt Junn Mitsuhashi (Japan) (2) 7-5,1-0 (Retd.); Maqdas Abdulla (Kuwait) bt Roberto Ortega (Spain) 7-5,2-6,-3; Vijayant Malik (5) bt Jason Jung (USA) 4-6,6-4,7-6(5); Karan Rastogi (4) bt N Sriram Balaji 6-4,6-7(1),6-4; Saketh Myeni bt Kunal Anand 6-3,6-1; Yuki Bhambri (1) bt James Marsalek (GBR) 6-0,7-6(6).