Gowda knocks out Lam in round one

Gowda, who trains at KSLTA’s High Performance Tennis Training centre, scored a 6-4, 6-3 win over his highly experienced opponent.

Gowda was tentative to begin with but got a grip of things towards the end of the first set before taking the lead. In the second set, Gowda switched to attack mode and succeeded in booking a second-round berth.

In another upset, qualifier Abhijeet Tiwari put on a good show to oust eighth seed Vivek Shokeen 6-2, 4-6, 6-2.

However, the top two seeds -- Ranjeet Virali Murugesan and Rohan Gajjar respectively -- remained on course.

Top seed Murugesan, who returned from playing in the German club league on Monday night, proved too good for Kunal Anand and won 6-2, 6-2. Gajjar, however, faced a stiffer challenge against Ajai Selvaraj before winning 7-6 (7-0), 6-0.

Another wild card from Karnataka, Sagar Manjanna, lost to Sumit Shinde 3-6, 4-6.
Results (first round, Indians unless specified):

Singles: Kaza Vinayak Sharma bt Akash Wagh 6-4, 6-1; Sumit Shinde bt Sagar Manjanna 6-3, 6-4; Niki Takuto (Jpn) bt UM Gagan Verma 6-0, 6-0; Rohan Gajjar bt Ajai Selvaraj 7-6 (7-0), 6-0; Abhijeet Tiwari bt Vivek Shokeen 6-2, 4-6, 6-2; Sudanwa Sitaram bt Amrit Narasimhan (US) 6-2 (retd); Vitali Reshetnikov (Rus) bt Elwin Antony 6-0, 6-3; Vinod Gowda bt Wing Lun Lam 6-4, 6-3; Vijayant Malik bt Suresh Krishna 6-3, 6-4; Ranjeet Virali Murugesan bt Kunal Anand 6-2, 6-2.

Doubles: Tejasvi Rao/ Vikram Reddy bt Niraj Elangovan/ Fariz Mohammed 6-1, 6-1; PC Vignesh/ Kaza Vinayak Sharma bt Sumit Shinde/ Gagan Verma 6-2, 6-4.