Prajnesh Gunneswaran was outgunned by Elias Ymer in an energy-sapping baseline slugfest to end as runner-up at the KPIT-MSLTA Challenger in Pune on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Playing his second final after winning the Bengaluru Open last week, Prajnesh lost 2-6, 5-7 to the third seeded Swede. The 29-year-old Indian had lost the final of the 2016 edition of the tournament as well.<\/p>\n
He served 12 aces at crucial points \u2013 when it was 30-30 or 40-30. It made a huge difference to the outcome of the game as he saved all four break points in the one-hour-27-minute match.<\/p>\n
With 48 points in his tally, Prajnesh, who is in the form of his life, will now move to his career-best singles rank of 104.<\/p>\n
\u201cMay be I need to get stronger to last in such long rallies but I could have played better. I need to get quicker and hit heavy so that I can take away two steps from him so that he does not return everything,\u201d said Prajnesh after the match.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe deserved to win, he played better than me throughout. I had my chance but he made extra balls. I was 9-0 (matches) coming into this match and definitely tired now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Prajnesh will now try to win a main draw entry into the Australian Open by winning the Asia-Pacific Play-off in Zuhai.<\/p>\n
Ymer said playing under the lights suited his style of play.<\/p>\n
The match ended with Prajnesh losing his serve in the 12th game at love with a forehand error.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Prajnesh Gunneswaran was outgunned by Elias Ymer in an energy-sapping baseline slugfest to end as runner-up at the KPIT-MSLTA Challenger in Pune on Saturday. Playing his second final after winning the Bengaluru Open last week, Prajnesh lost 2-6, 5-7 to the third seeded Swede. The 29-year-old Indian had lost the final of the 2016 edition of the tournament as well. He served 12 aces at crucial points \u2013 when it was 30-30 or 40-30. It made a huge difference to the outcome of the game as he saved all four break points in the one-hour-27-minute match. With 48 points in his tally, Prajnesh, who is in the form of his life, will now move to his career-best singles rank of 104. \u201cMay be I need to get stronger to last in such long rallies but I could have played better. I need to get quicker and hit heavy so that I can take away two steps from him so that he does not return everything,\u201d said Prajnesh after the match. \u201cHe deserved to win, he played better than me throughout. I had my chance but he made extra balls. I was 9-0 (matches) coming into this match and definitely tired….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2018-newa","category-latest-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2519","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=2519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2521,"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2519\/revisions\/2521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpittennis.com\/challengers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}