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Journalism of Courage
Top seed Karan Rastogi outgunned Harsh Mankad 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 to storm into the singles semi-finals of the Indian Oil Servo National Grasscourt Tennis Championship at the South Club here today.
Mankad broke Rastogi in the first game to go 4-2 ahead, but Rastogi returned strongly and broke back in the eighth and tenth games before sealing the set in 30 minutes.
Mankad was again in front in the second set, moving ahead 5-2. Then Rastogi broke back and was at 4-5 when Mankad squandered four set points before converting the fifth to draw parity.
Rastogi got his act together in the decider for a comfortable win.
Sixth-seed J Vishnu Vardhan sent national champion Ashutosh Singh packing 6-4, 6-0 to book his berth in the semi-finals.
Divij Sharan and V M Ranjit Nadu also booked last-four berths.
Divij beat veteran Vinod Sridhar of Tamil Nadu 6-4, 6-3, V M Ranjeet outplayed wild card Syed Fazaluddin of Bengal 6-1, 6-2.
In women’s singles, top-seed Rushmi Chakravarty, Poojashree Venkatesh, Treta Bhattacharjee, and Sonal Phadke won their quarter final matches to move to the next stage.
Chakravarthy beat seventh seed Rashmi Teltumbde of Maharashtra 6-1, 6-2, while unseeded Pooja Shree of Karnataka ousted statemate and third seed Asha Nanda Kumar 7-5,6-1.
Delhi’s Shalini Sahoo beat second seed Sonal Phadke of Maharashtra 6-3,6-1 in the other quarter final match.
