Pune , November 17 : N Vijay Sundar Prashanth and N Sriram Balaji\u00a0 \u00a0kept the Indian flag flying as they entered the\u00a0second round qualifying \u00a0at\u00a0 the KPIT MSLTA ATP Challenger organized by MSLTA and PMDTA\u00a0 and played at the Mhalunge-Balewadi Tennis Complex which started in the city today<\/p>\n
N Vijay Sundar Prashanth Survived three match points to over come Asian Junior Champion Siddhant Banthia (IND)\u00a03-6, 7-6(3), 7-5 in a match lasting 2 hours and 40 minutes\u00a0 \u00a0Prashanth\u00a0 who got married last week coming back to the circuit\u00a0 from a break\u00a0 lost the first set and looked rusty before he got his bearing and hanging on to the second set and forcing a third set , Banthia who won the Asian Junior Championships looked in control and looking to wrap the match , but some poor shot selection saw him lose grip from a commanding 5-4 (40-15) position to go down to the experienced Prashant .<\/p>\n
N Sriram Balaji who made the event as an alternate\u00a0capitalized\u00a0on his lucky entry into the event to set up a close 6-7(7),6-4,7-6(4) win over Luke Saville of Australia in 2 hour 40 mins to make it to the second round , even as 10 Indian players who got an entry to participate in the event were ousted<\/p>\n
Dutch Player Miliaan Niesten outhit \u00a0wildcard Dhruv Sunish 6-4, 6-3;Youssef Hossam of Egypt got past \u00a0Nitin Kumar Sinha 6-3, 6-4 with ease\u00a0 , while\u00a0Seventh seeded\u00a0Sanjar Fayziev Of Uzbekistan was challenged in the second set by Sidharth Rawat before winning 6-1, 6-4;\u00a0Another Uzbek Khumoyun\u00a0Sultanov spent close to an hour on court to dispose off Kunal Anand \u00a06-3, 6-0 while\u00a0Fifth seeded German Benjamin Hassan \u00a0outsmarted Suraj Prabodh 6-1, 6-2.<\/p>\n
Japanese Rio Noguchi \u00a0was given a fight by Abhinav Shanmugam before winning 6-4, 6-4, while\u00a0Danylo Kalenichenko of Ukraine \u00a0 Aced our Jayesh Pungliya \u00a06-3, 6-4;\u00a0Local wild card Tejas Chaukulkar showed some promise winning the first set but eventually went down to Italian\u00a0\u00a0Francesco Vilardo \u00a0losing \u00a06-7(), 6-1, 6-0;<\/p>\n
In the upsets of the day In a All French match\u00a0Mick Lescure upset fourth seeded\u00a0Antoine Escoffier \u00a07-5, 6-4 while Israel\u2019s\u00a0Ben Patael took out second seeded\u00a0Liam Broady Of Britain 6-3, 6-3 while\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Lucas Gerch Of Germany came back from loss of the first set to upset third seeded\u00a0Zsombor Piros of Hungary \u00a04-6, 6-2, 6-3.<\/strong><\/p>\n Meanwhile the organisors awarded Manish Suresh Kumar\u00a0 and Mukund Sasikumar the remaining\u00a0 two wild cards for the tournament as Saketh Myneni who is the finals of the Bengaluru Open was awarded the Special Exempt and Sumit Nagal moved into the main draw as the last direct acceptance , informed Sunder Iyer Tournament Director<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Miliaan Niesten (NED) bt [WC] Dhruv Sunish (IND)6-4, 6-3;<\/p>\n Mick Lescure (FRA) bt\u00a0\u00a0[4] Antoine Escoffier (FRA) 7-5, 6-4;<\/strong><\/p>\n N Vijay Sundar Prashanth (IND) vs [WC] Siddhant Banthia (IND)\u00a03-6, 7-6(), 7-5;<\/p>\n Youssef Hossam (EGY) bt\u00a0\u00a0Nitin Kumar Sinha (IND) 6-3, 6-4;<\/p>\n Ben Patael (ISR)\u00a0bt\u00a0\u00a0[2] Liam Broady (GBR) 6-3, 6-3;<\/strong><\/p>\n Danylo Kalenichenko (UKR) bt\u00a0\u00a0[WC] Jayesh Pungliya (IND) 6-3, 6-4;<\/p>\n Francesco Vilardo (ITA) vs [WC] Tejas Chaukulkar (IND)\u00a0\u00a06-7(), 6-1, 6-0;<\/p>\n [7] Sanjar Fayziev (UZB)\u00a0bt\u00a0Sidharth Rawat (IND) 6-1, 6-4;<\/p>\n Khumoyun\u00a0Sultanov (UZB) bt\u00a0\u00a0Kunal Anand (IND) 6-3, 6-0;<\/p>\n [5] Benjamin Hassan (GER)\u00a0bt\u00a0Suraj Prabodh (IND) 6-1, 6-2;<\/p>\n Rio Noguchi (JPN)\u00a0bt\u00a0Abhinav Shanmugam (IND)\u00a06-4, 6-4;<\/p>\n Lucas Gerch (GER)\u00a0bt\u00a0[3] Zsombor Piros (HUN) 4-6, 6-2, 6-3;<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pune , November 17 : N Vijay Sundar Prashanth and N Sriram Balaji\u00a0 \u00a0kept the Indian flag flying as they entered the\u00a0second round qualifying \u00a0at\u00a0 the KPIT MSLTA ATP Challenger organized by MSLTA and PMDTA\u00a0 and played at the Mhalunge-Balewadi Tennis Complex which started in the city today N Vijay Sundar Prashanth Survived three match points to over come Asian Junior Champion Siddhant Banthia (IND)\u00a03-6, 7-6(3), 7-5 in a match lasting 2 hours and 40 minutes\u00a0 \u00a0Prashanth\u00a0 who got married last week coming back to the circuit\u00a0 from a break\u00a0 lost the first set and looked rusty before he got his bearing and hanging on to the second set and forcing a third set , Banthia who won the Asian Junior Championships looked in control and looking to wrap the match , but some poor shot selection saw him lose grip from a commanding 5-4 (40-15) position to go down to the experienced Prashant . N Sriram Balaji who made the event as an alternate\u00a0capitalized\u00a0on his lucky entry into the event to set up a close 6-7(7),6-4,7-6(4) win over Luke Saville of Australia in 2 hour 40 mins to make it to the second round , even as 10 Indian….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1992"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1994,"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992\/revisions\/1994"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Following are the results: First Qualifying Round:<\/h3>\n