Nardi, Nagal progress

Sumit Nagal coming began a new week on tour from where he left off.

Bengaluru: To play the first round match of a tournament right after winning the previous event, is a tricky spot to be in for a tennis player.

With little to no time for recovery, expectations running high and the mind forced to recoil to start afresh could turn out to work against a competitor.

For someone who rarely finds himself in such a position, Sumit Nagal, coming to the city after capturing the Chennai ATP Challenger on Sunday, didn’t allow any of the above to affect him as he began a new week on tour from where he left off.

The Indian, who broke into the top-100 (World No. 98) on Monday, had to earn his points but did enough to secure a dominant 6-2, 6-2 win over Geoffrey Blancaneaux of France in an hour and 27 minutes at the DafaNews Bengaluru Open.

The 26-year-old Nagal got off the blocks right away by breaking Blancaneaux in the first game. Showing intent and never stepping off the gas, he held his fort before finding his second break in the seventh game to lead 5-2.

Closing out the first set on serve, the home favourite, seeded second here, looked like he was going to wrap up the match in straight sets.

And steamroll he did, as Nagal’s overall game was no match to the World No. 274 Frenchman who got broken twice (first and fifth games) yet again.

With a wide serve on the ad court that Blancaneaux barely got his racket on, Nagal closed out the match and advanced to the round-of-16.

At the end of a 2 hour 20 minutes battle, top seed Luka Nardi heaved a sigh of relief while approaching the net to shake hands with his opponent. The 20-year-old Italian was tested and stretched all over the court by qualifier Dan Added of France in the formers’ 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (0) win.

In another clash, Chinese Taipei’s Chun Hsin Tseng, the 2022 champion here, had to grind through the qualifying rounds only to be knocked out in the first round of the main draw. Tseng, one of the two former champions in the event, went down 5-7, 3-6 to eighth seed Oriol Roca Batalla.

Results: First round (prefix denotes seeding): 8-Oriol Roca Batalla (ESP) bt Q-Chun-Hsin Tseng (TPE) 7-5, 6-3; Maks Kasnikowski (Pol) bt Tung-Lin Wu (TPE) 7-5, 6-2; Q-Alexey Zakharvov bt Samuel Vincent Ruggeri (Ita) 6-2, 7-5; Tristan Boyer (USA) bt Bernard Tomic (Aus) 3-6, 6-3, 6-3; 4-Benjamin Bonzi (Fra) bt Philip Sekulic (Aus) 6-3, 6-2; 9-Seongchan Hong (Kor) bt Tristan Schoolkate (Aus) 6-4, 6-3; WC-Vasek Pospisil (Can) bt Q-Eric Vanshelboim (Ukr) 7-6 (2), 3-6, 7-6 (0); 1-Luca Nardi (Ita) bt Dan Added (Fra) 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (0); Coleman Wong (HKG) bt Q-Raphael Collingnon (Bel) 6-4, 7-6 (4); 2-Sumit Nagal (Ind) bt Geoffrey Blancaneaux (Fra) 6-2, 6-2; Enrico Dalla Valle (Ita) bt Evgeny Donskoy 6-2, 7-5.