Ghouse gives Greek lesson

Hyderabad, Oct 21: You may have a big serve and great reach at the net, but it does not always pay to be a six-footer in tennis. More so ...

Hyderabad, Oct 21: You may have a big serve and great reach at the net, but it does not always pay to be a six-footer in tennis. More so on clay where loose sand could at times make the ball skid and squat. None might agree to this more readily today than Niko Karagiannis of Greece after his second round loss in the GVK-Satellite tennis tournament at the Gymkhana complex here. The sixth seed, who stands well over six feet and is built like a powerhouse, strained his back so much bending throughout his match here that his opponent Mustafa Ghouse finally brought him to his knees.

To his credit, the Indian qualifier mixed his compact game well with intelligent ball play to carve out a 6-2, 6-3 win that earned him a passport to the quarterfinals.

The Greek tragedy began as early as the first game in which Karagiannis sent down two double faults. How much ever he tried, he kept serving double faults to offer Ghouse the first of his three service breaks on a platter.

The only game in which Karagiannismanaged to hold serve came after Ghouse was comfortably perched at 4-0. Then the Greek gathered some hope with a break-back in the 6th only to lose the next service game with yet another double-fault. Ghouse pocketed the set on his third set point in the next game.

There was no change in the pattern of play in the second set, except that Ghouse now started sending low, crisp groundstrokes into Karagiannis8217; backhand court. The Greek, who was already sliding and slipping at the baseline, found the low balls too difficult to return. And Ghouse, despite dropping serve once 8th game, was quick to exploit the situation with three breaks 1st, 5th and 9th to emerge a deserving winner.

Karagiannis8217; exit meant that each of the first three days saw the fall of a seeded player in the descending order 8th seeded Ondrej Chvapil, 7th seed Marian Leysek and now 6th seed Karagiannis.

And just when it seemed that it could be the turn of 5th seeded Timo Nigri of Germany on Thursday, his second round opponentVasudeva Reddy altered the trend by going down to the German 7-5, 3-6, 3-6.

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Nigri now runs into fourth seeded Swede Johan Hede who beat Sandeep Kirtane 6-2, 6-4. Others who completed the last eight line-up were top three seeds 8212; Prahlad Srinath, Federico Rovai and Patrick Erhardt 8212; Thai teenager Danai Udomchoke and qualifier Saurav Panja.