National champion Ashutosh Singh created the first major upset of the ITF Men's Futures Bellary Open 2007, packing off top seed Pavol Cervenak of Slovakia 6-3, 6-4 in a first-round encounter at the Police Gymkhana courts here on Tuesday.
Undeterred by the scorching heat and an opponent ranked 335 places above him, Ashutosh blazed into the second round with a performance that sent the motley crowd into raptures.
After splitting the first two games in the opening set, Ashutosh held serve and broke his opponent in the fourth to take a 3-1 lead. Though the big-serving Slovak tried to stage a recovery by firing a couple of aces, he couldn't break Ashutosh's serve and ended up losing the first set 3-6.
Cervenak began the second set with a bang by taking the first game without dropping a point and in the second game was on the verge of breaking Ashutosh. He had only himself to blame for squandering the opportunity, paying the penalty for rushing things. Along with the rising temperature, Cervenak’s temper too was on a high.
He invited the wrath of the chair umpire for flinging his racquet in frustration.
Keeping cool
On the other hand, Ashutosh, who was trailing 0-40, kept his cool and clawed his way back with some deft placements and after forcing a deuce went on to win the game, which on hindsight proved very crucial.
With both players holding serve and neither being able to break, it appeared as if the set would go to a tie-breaker. Ashutosh got the all-important break as he employed the drop shot with clinical precision in the night game which lasted more than 20 minutes and saw seven deuces.
Serving for the match at 5-4, Ashutosh showed no signs of complacency and the one-hour 28-minute ordeal was over for Cervenak when he committed another of his numerous unforced errors.
"I just stuck to the basics and played my natural game and the result is there to see,'' said an elated Ashutosh.
Yuki Bhambri couldn't repeat his giant-killing act of the National championship as he crashed out with a 1-6, 4-6 defeat to Israel's sixth-seeded Dekel Valtzer.
First-round results: (prefix denotes seeding, Indians unless mentioned): Ashutosh Singh bt 1-Pavol Cervenak (Svk) 6-3, 6-4; 2-Teodor-Dacian Craciun (Rom) bt Navdeep Singh 6-3, 6-2; Sunil Kumar Sipaeya bt Vijay Kannan 7-5, 6-7 (1-7), 7-5; 8-Alexey Kedryuk (Kaz) bt Robert Belak (Ser) 4-6, 7-6 (7-5), 6-2; Shivang Mishra bt Aditya Madkekar 7-6 (7-2), 6-7 (4-7), 6-3; Ivan Anikanov (Ukr) bt Marek Semjan (Svk) 6-3, 6-4; 3-Rainer Eitzinger (Aut) bt N Vijay Sundar Prashanth 6-2, 7-5; 5-Dekel Valtzer (Isr) bt Yuki Bhambri 6-1, 6-4; 7-Adrian-Vasile Gavrila (Rom) bt Ashwin Vijayaraghavan 6-4, 7-5; 6-Darko Madjarovski (Ser) bt Divij Sharan 6-2, 6-2; 4-Ivan Cerovic (Cro) bt Ranjeet V Murugesan 6-0, 6-4; Philipp Oswald (Aut) bt Tushar Liberhan 6-3, 6-3.
