JOIN USAbhimanyu, Apoorva in semis
Karnataka’s Abhimanyu Vannemreddy and Apoorva SB churned out impressive wins against their opponents in the boys’ and girls’ singles sections respectively to enter the semifinals of the AITA National Series under-16 tennis tournament for the RT Narayan Memorial Trophy at the KSLTA courts here on Thursday.
In the boys’ quarterfinals, third seed Abhimanyu came out with a strong performance to pull off a stunning 6-1, 6-1 victory over ninth seed Kushal Yedla of Andhra Pradesh, while Apoorva, seeded ninth, overcame a tough battle to upset fourth seed Smriti Singh of Haryana 6-4, 3-6, 7-5 in the girls’ last-eight tie.
Abhimanyu will take on Megh Bharghav Patel of Gujarat while Apoorva will be up against Humera Shaik of Andhra Pradesh in the semifinals on Friday. Coming in to the tie as firm favourite, Abhimanyu, apart from the solitary game, broke his opponent on every occasion.
After going through ups and downs in the first three games, Abhimanyu produced some powerful groundstrokes to break Kushal’s serve in the fourth and go 3-1 up.
There was an long battle struggle in the fifth game before Abhimanyu held his serve. Kushal seemed determined with his hard-hitting strokes, to take a 40-15 lead, but the Karnataka boy remained firm and hit an array of shots to bounce back and win the game, to leave the scores at 4-1.
Kushal tried to stage a fightback but Abhimanyu broke him again to eventually clinch the set at 6-1. There no was respite for Kushal even in the second set as Abhimanyu thoroughly dominated him and went on to claim the set at 6-1 and with it the tie.
In the girls’ singles, Apoorva sent Smriti packing in a three-set encounter that saw aggressive tennis from both players. After losing the first set to Apoorva (4-6), Smriti made a strong comeback to win the second 6-3. However, Apoorva held her nerve in the decider to claim the third 7-5 and the match.
Results: Quarterfinals: Boys’ singles: Dhakshineswar Suresh bt Ashutosh Tiwari 7-6 (4), 6-1; Karan Srivastava bt Neeraj Yashpaul 6-4, 6-4; Abhimanyu Vannemreddy bt Kushal Yedla 6-1, 6-1; Megh Bhargav Patel bt Kavan Somu Kumar 6-1, 6-0.
Doubles, semifinals: Dhakshineswar Suresh/ Megh Bhargav Patel bt Ashutosh Tiwari/ Siddharth Thakran 6-0, 6-2; Arjun Honnappa/ Kavan Somu Kumar lt to Karan Srivastava/ Abhimanyu Vannemreddy 6-1, 6-3.
Girls: singles, quarterfinals: Shivani Amineni bt Parvvi Srikaanth Paatil 6-1, 6-1; Yubrani Banerjee bt Rutuparna Choudhary 6-2, 7-5; Apoorva SB bt Smriti Singh 6-4, 3-6, 7-5; Humera Shaik bt Shimran KS 6-2, 6-0.
Doubles, semifinals: Shivani Amineni/ Humera Shaik bt Raina Zaffar/ Neha Ghare 6-2, 1-6, 11-9; Salsa Aher/ Rutuparna Choudhary bt Aishwarya Andalkar/ Pooja Ingale 6-0, 6-2.