Local challenge gets booted out

October 13: The bridge between the good and the bad at the UN Mehta Memorial ITF women's circuit tournament here today happened to be too...

October 13: The bridge between the good and the bad at the UN Mehta Memorial ITF women’s circuit tournament here today happened to be too wide. And the outcome was pretty ugly. The top eight seeds were on a different plane compared to the rest of the field, and result were overwhelmingly lopsided second round matches at the AGETA courts. In six out of the eight matches played today, the loser could not win more than two games.

The start of the second day was delayed due to overnight rains. But the bright sunlight in the morning with the sight of four Ahmedabad girls on all the four courts. But as was expected, the sun set on the local players very soon. There was not much of a difference between the qualifiers or the seasoned local players. Jinal Patel, Nikita Bhardwaj and Shweta Ravji drew a blank while Niyati Shetty and Karishma Patel just managed two games.

The beneficiaries for these freebies were Shruti Dhawan, Orawan Wongkamalasai, Sai Jayalakshmi, Archana Venkatraman and Rushmi Chakravarthi. Inanother match, Anna Nefedova drew some sweat in her 6-3, 6-2 win over Priyanka Deskmukh while Sadiya Pathan was unlucky when she had to conceded the match due to injury against Arthi Venkatraman.

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The most eagerly anticipated quarter-final match will be between Bangalore’s Archana and Chandigarh’s Shruti Dhawan. The two faced each other just last week at the National women’s championship where in a close match Shruti won the deciding set on the tie-breaker 10-8. Playing down the revenge part, Archana called it just another tennis match but certainly special.

The other clash pits the two Thai girls Orawan and Montika Anuchan. The WTA rankings and national seeding are in Orawan’s favour, but from Montika’s form it seems there is very little to choose between the two.

RESULTS:

Singles (first round; seedings in bracket):

1-Archana Venkatraman bt Niyati Shetty 6-1, 6-1; 8-Shruti Dhawan bt Jinal Patel 6-0, 6-0; 3-Sai Jayalakshmi bt Shweta Ravji 6-0, 6-0; 5-Arthi Venkatraman bt Sadiya Pathan6-1, 4-6, (15-0) match conceded due to injury; 7-Montika Anuchan bt Tara Kambargimath 6-1, 6-0; 4-Orawan Wongkamalasai bt Nikita Bhardwaj 6-0, 6-0; 6-Rushmi Chakravarthy bt Karishma Patel 6-2, 6-3; 2-Anna Nefedova bt Priyanka Contractor 6-2, 6-3.

Doubles:

Sadiya Pathan & Tara Kamabargimath conceded match to Nikita Bhardwaj & Trishna Williams; Anna Nefedova & Stutti Smit bt Neha Bhardwaj & Jinal Patel 4-1 (match conceded); Juthika Choksi & Shalini Thakur bt Karishma Patel & Priyanka Contractor 7-5, 2-6, 6-1.

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