Chen, Malik have it easy

Top seed Ti Chen hardly broke a sweat as he cruised into the pre-quarterfinals along with third seed Vijayant Malik, who accounted for local hope Vinod Gowda, on the opening day of the Toyota $10,000 men’s ITF Futures tournament here on Monday.

Chinese Taipei’s Chen, ranked 301, outclassed Scott Puodziunas of Australia 6-2, 6-1 in a first-round encounter that lasted for just 55 minutes. Well before that, India’s Malik, the finalist of the Mandya leg, demolished compatriot and unseeded Vinod 6-1, 6-2 in a little over an hour.

It was curtains for eighth-seeded Italian Francesco Vilardo, who went down to unseeded Warit Sornbutnark of Thailand 3-6, 6-2, 6-7 (6-8).

Malik, who raced to a 5-0 lead in the first set, broke his opponent’s serve with powerful forehands in the second and fourth games before the 22-year-old took a firm grip of the match, breaking Gowda in the fifth and seventh games of the second set to easily progress to the next round.

Chen took full advantage of an erratic Puodziunas, going 4-0 up with breaks in the first and third games of the opening set. Chen’s impressive net play put his rival on the backfoot and the Aussie failed to come up with a counter strategy. The next three games then went on with the serve as Chen took a 5-2 lead. 

Serving for the set Chen faltered for the first time and was down by a break point at 30-40. But the 28-year-old managed to come out unscathed to pocket the first set when his opponent floated a backhand long. Puodziunas faltered at the start of the second set too, dropping the first game before failing to hold the third and seventh as well. Chen, who raised his game as the match progressed, ended the unseeded Aussie’s agony with a deep return that his rival dumped into the net.

Results (first round, prefix denotes seeding, Indians unless specified): 7-Kittiphong Wachiramanowong (Tha) bt Yogesh Phogat 6-4, 6-2; 3-Vijayant Malik bt Vinod Gowda 6-1, 6-2; Warit Sornbutnark (Tha) bt 8-Francesco Vilardo (Ita) 3-6, 6-2, 7-6 (6); Abhijeet Tiwari bt Krishik Divakar 6-1, 6-2; 1-Ti-Chen (Tpe) bt Scott Puodziunas (Aus) 6-2, 6-1; Kunal Anand bt Aaditya Tewari 6-4, 6-3.

Doubles: Elwin Antony/ Fariz Mohammed bt Tejas Chaukulkar/ Venkat Iyer 7-6(3), 6-3; 2-Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan/ Ranjeet Virali-Murugesan bt Sagar Ahuja/ Vishwanath Savadi 6-4, 6-2; 3-Vijayant Malik/ Kaza Vinayak Sharma bt Krishna Karsolia/ Neishit Vakil 6-1, 6-2; 4-Abhijeet Tiwari/ Ashwin Vijayragavan bt Kenny Bun (Cam)/ Saurabh Patil 6-2, 6-3; Krishik Divakar/ Sagar Manjanna bt Ravi Shankar Sathiyaraj Mitra/ Ganga Singh 6-1, 3-6, 10-6; 1-N Sriram Balaji/ Arun-Prakash Rajagopalan bt Sidharth Rawat/ Aaditya Tewari 6-2, 7-5.