Ratnika upsets fifth seed Scimone in ITF tournament

On a hot, windy summer afternoon the 16-year-old, with her big serve and decent groundstrokes, overcame her opponent in the first set but failed to hold even her service games in the second.

The Delhi girl, however, came back strongly in the decider and broke Scimone for a 3-1 lead and thereafter it was a matter of holding her serve. She next plays compatriot and doubles partner Rutuja Bhosale who showed South Africa's Tegan Edwards the door.

On the adjacent court, Rishika Sunkara, hitting fluent groundstrokes, rallied to make it a set-all against third-seeded Mexican Nadia Abdala but ran out of steam in the decider to lose 5-7, 6-2, 0-6.  

After a closely fought first set, the Mexican's stream of unforced errors allowed Rishika to claw her way back. After an early exchange of breaks, the Indian broke Nadia in the fifth and the seventh game to push the issue to a third set.

However, Rishika's weak serve proved her undoing, with Nadia pouncing on her weak second serve. Rishika, who failed to hold her own serve, had a couple of opportunities to break Nadia's serve early in the set.        

Nadia now plays Turkmenistan's Anastasiya Prenko, who defeated Ankita Bhatia of India 6-3, 6-2. In other opening round matches, Indian wildcard Aishwarya Agrawal wasted five match points before losing 4-6, 7-5, 6-0 to Australia's Lauren Breadmore.

Top seed Keren Shlomo made short work of her match against Siru He of China, beating her 6-0, 6-2, while second-seeded Rushmi Chakravarthi of India defeated qualifier S. Chamarthi 6-3, 6-1.

Eighth-seeded Prerna Bhambri of India, too, had it easy against wildcard Tarrannum Handa, winning 6-3, 6-1.