Karan, Ramkumar go down at PMRDA Powered MahaOpen ATP Challenger 100 Men’s Championship
Main Draw:
• Karan Singh (India), a wildcard entrant, went down in the opening round to Alexis Galarneau (Canada) in straight sets, 6-4, 6-1. Galarneau, ranked 170th in the world, broke Singh in the first game of both sets. Though Singh showed confidence in the first set, he struggled and lost tamely in the second.
• Valentin Vacherot (Monaco), the defending champion from last year, caused the first upset of the tournament. Vacherot defeated Elmer Moller (Denmark), the fourth seed, with a scoreline of 5-7, 6-2, 6-4 in just over two hours.
• Dalibor Svrcina (Czech Republic), a regular on the Indian Futures tour, fought hard to defeat August Holmgren (Denmark) in a marathon match lasting 2 hours 26 minutes. Svrcina saved two match points to win 6-4, 3-6, 7-5.
Final Qualifying Round:
• Kimmer Coppejans (Belgium), seeded seventh, defeated Ramkumar Ramanathan (India), who had shown glimpses of brilliance in the second set but could not maintain his level. The match ended 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-0 in 2 hours 3 minutes.
• Michael Geerts (Belgium), Masamichi Imamura (Japan), Ilia Simakin (Russia), and Petr Bar Biryukov (Russia) all advanced to the main draw with impressive wins in their final qualifying rounds.
• Hiroki Moriya (Japan) also progressed by defeating Matthew Dellavedova (Australia).
Doubles:
In the first round of the doubles event, Jay Clarke (GBR) and Jurij Rodionov (AUT) triumphed over Enzo Couacaud (FRA) and Rio Noguchi (JPN) in a thrilling match that went to a match tiebreak. The final score was 6-3, 5-7, 12-10.
The tournament is off to an exciting start, with top-level tennis on display and more thrilling matches to look forward to!
