Karunuday claims Mandya title

 The final of the Mysore Minerals Ltd Mandya Open ended in an anti-climax with tournament top seed Antoine Escoffier of France retiring with a twisted ankle against third seed Karunuday Singh of India here on Saturday.

The Frenchman was trailing 0-3 in the first set when he called for the physio’s help to deal with the injury sustained in Friday’s semifinal against India’s Vishnu Vardhan, before deciding against playing and further aggravating the injury.

While Singh was not too happy with claiming the title the way it panned out, he certainly was comfortable with the 18 ATP points.

Escoffier said: “I was having problems walking on court and the pain was too much. So I decided to do what is best. I spoke to my coach and parents in France and will go back home and rest for a week and not take part in the ITF Mysuru Open”.

Top players advance

Bhavesh Gour, Sandeep Choudhary, Hardeep Singh Sandhu and Tejas Chaukulkar cantered into the second round of the Sobha ITF Mysuru Open qualifiers here at the Infosys Campus on Saturday.

Results: Men’s singles qualifiers (Indian unless stated): Bhavesh Gour bt Dalwinder Singh 6-4, 6-3; Sarshan Srinivas bt Shane Biddaiah 6-4, 6-3; Sandeep Choudhary bt Poorva S Kumar 7-5, 6-4; Adiya Tiwari bt Ribhav Ravikiran 6-0, 6-0; Hardeep Singh Sandhu bt Alex Solanki 6-1, 6-1, Rishi Reddy bt Vikram Naidu Bangalore Srinivas 7-5, 6-4, Tejas Chaukulkar bt Abhinav Sanjeev Shanmugham 6-3, 6-2, Nitin Kumar Sinha bt Jaganmaya Panigrahi 6-0, 6-0; Jayjesh Pungliya bt Kunal Vazirani 6-3, 6-3; Siddarth Vishwakarma bt Raghavendra Subramanya 6-3, 6-3, Taha Kapadia bt Prashanth Selvaraj 6-3, 5-7, 6-4; Haadin Bava bt Vigneshwaran Ramesh 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (2); Rohan Bhatia bt Neishit Vakil 6-0, 6-3; Shahbaz Khan bt Aryan Goveas 7-6 (3), 6-4; Rishab Agarwal bt Sahil Gaware 6-2, 6-4; Puru Upaday bt Maninder Singh 4-6, 7-6 (9), 7-6 (7).