Dominant Humera powers past Pooja

Second seed Humera Shaik of Andhra Pradesh produced a dominant performance to oust Pooja Ingale of Maharashtra 6-3, 6-2 en route to the quarterfinal of the AITA National Series under-16 tennis tournament for the RT Narayan Memorial Trophy at the KSLTA courts here on Wednesday.

Coming in to the contest as a strong favourite, Humera held her serve without much trouble before going on to break Pooja in the second game.

A powerful forehand return gave Humera her first point in the second game, but an unforced error that followed soon after, brought Pooja level at 15-15. Humera then produced some delightful groundstrokes to force her opponent onto backfoot and claim the game.

Pooja, however, earned a break in the fourth game when the second seed started becoming complacent and found herself making a slew of unforced errors. Humera went on to lose the game with the scores at 3-1.   In what was a wake-up call for the Andhra girl, she upped her game and went on to win the set 6-3.

Unlike in the first set, Humera came out all guns blazing in the second while claiming it 6-2, and with it, a comfortable victory.

In the boys’ singles, unseeded Kavan S Kumar of Karnataka continued his impressive run, by beating fifth seeded Vaibhav Kundu of Haryana 4-6, 7-5, 6-2 on his way to clinching a quarterfinal berth.

Abhimanyu Vannemreddy, also of Karnataka joined Kavan in the last-eight, beating VM Sandeep of Tamil Nadu 6-1, 6-2, while Karnataka’s Arjun Honnappa went down to the fourth seed Karan Srivastava 1-6, 6-2, 4-6.

Results: Boys: Singles: (pre-quarterfinals): Dhakshineshwar Suresh bt Tanisq Malpani  6-0, 6-0; Ashutosh Tiwari bt Srinivasan Kannan 6-3, 6-2 ; Karan Srivastava bt Arjun Honnappa 6-1, 2-6, 6-4; Neeraj Yashpal bt Jaishvin Sidaana 6-4, 6-3; Kushal Yedla bt Siddarth Thakaran 7-5, 6-4; Abhimanyu Vannamreddy bt VM Sandeep 6-4, 6-2; Kavan Kumar bt Vaibhav Kundu 4-6, 7-5, 6-2; Megh B Patel bt Oges Theyjo J 6-2, 6-3.

Doubles: first round: Dhakshineshwar Suresh/ Megh Patel bt Krishna Sai/ Praneeth V 6-1, 6-1; B Prasanna/ Abhishek bt Amaan/ Rishabh 6-2, 6-2; Ashutosh/ Siddharth bt Aditya/ Tejasvi 6-3, 6-1; Ananth/ Sandeep bt Kushal/ Arjun 6-3, 6-4; Jaishvin Singh/ Rajesh bt Arka Ganguly/ Vikram 7-6 (4), 6-4; Arjun/ Kavan bt Vaibhav/ Yashpaul 6-3, 6-2; Mallpani/ Agarwal bt Sarthak/ Rudraksh 6-3, 6-4; Srivastava/ Abhimanyu bt Kapeesh/ Kamaksh 6-0, 6-1.

Girls: Singles (Pre-quarterfinals): Shivani Amineni bt Avishka Gupta 6-2, 6-1; Parvvi Patil bt Muskan Ranjan 6-2, 6-4; Yubarani Banerjee bt Vineetha M 6-1, 6-1; Rutuparna Choudhary bt Prathibha Prasad 7-5, 6-4; SB Apoorva bt Syeda Shaj Begum 6-2, 6-7 (3), 7-5; Smriti Singh bt Neha Ghare 6-4, 6-3; KS Shimran bt Salsa Aher 7-5, 6-2; Humera Shaikh bt Pooja Ingale 6-3, 6-2.