JOIN USGermany’s Torsten Wietsoka stunned fourth-seeded Indian Vijay Sundar Prashant in the opening round of the ITF Belgaum Open tennis tournament at the VTU courts here on Monday.
Torsten, who had to make it through two rounds of qualifying before making it to the main draw, posted a hard-fought 6-3, 7-6 (7-3) win over Vijay to march into the second round.
Portugal’s Andre Gasper scored an impressive 6-1, 6-1 win over India’s Rajat Maheshwari.
While Vijay was sent packing, seventh seed Ashwin Vijayraghavan came close to emmulating his compatriot before standing his ground to overcome wild card Lakshit Sood in his opening match.
Results (first round, Prefix denotes seeding, Indians unless mentioned): Singles: Luca Margaroli (Sui) bt Vinod Gowda 6-2, 6-1; Colin Van Beem (Ned) bt 5-Sergei Krotiouk 6-2, 6-3; 7-Ashwin Vijayaraghavan bt Lakshit Sood 6-7 (6-8), 6-1, 7-5; 6-Michael Shabaz (US) bt William Kendall (US) 6-1, 6-1; Andre Gasper (Por) bt Rajat Maheshwari 6-1, 6-1; Torsten Wietsoka (Ger) bt 4-Vijay Sundar Prashant 6-3, 7-6 (7-3).
Doubles: 3-Sriram Balaji/ Vignesh PC bt Mohit Mayur/ Ramkumar Ramanthan 2-6, 7-5, 10-3; 4-Theodoros Angelinos (Gre)/ Sanam Singh (Ind) bt Sagar Ahuja/ Saurabh Patil 3-1 (retd); Kunal Anand/ Ronak Manuja bt Chinmay Pradhan/ Nishit Vakil 6-0, 6-2; Rupesh Roy/ Vivek Shokeen bt Ajai Selvaraj/ Ashwin Vijayraghavan 6-4, 6-3; Jatin Dahiya/ Shabaz Khan bt Jorean Benard/ Colin Van Beem (Ned) 6-4, 2-6, 10-8; 2-Sergei Krotiok (Rus)/ Luca Margaroli (Sui) bt Neeraj Elangovan/ Fariz Mohammed 6-4, 6-2.