Ramkumar sparkles in sunshine

The wild card entrant took full advantage of a tiring top seed Nardi to post a come-from-behind win to move into the quarterfinal.

Bengaluru: The summer in the city was in a hurry to set in this year. The weather conditions, generally much hotter than what Bengaluru is used to experiencing in early February, turned out to be the deciding factor in the clash between Ramkumar Ramanathan and Luka Nardi. 

Wild card entrant Ramanathan took full advantage of a tiring top seed Nardi to post a come-from-behind 1-6, 6-4, 6-4 win in an hour and 33 minutes to move into the quarterfinal of the DafaNews Bengaluru Open here on Wednesday.

With the court temperature reading 33 degree Celsius during a match that began at 12:30 pm, the World No. 108 was clearly in no mood to spend too much time on the centre court of the Karnataka State Lawn Tennis Association (KSLTA).

In that pursuit, the 20-year-old Nardi sprinted away with the first set 6-1, breaking Ramkumar thrice.

Made to look average in the opener, the Chennai player clawed his way back into the contest by relying on his knowledge and familiarity of playing in the sweltering heat. Ramkumar worked hard to hold his serves while hanging on to see the first signs Nardi breaking down due to the heat. And the 29-year-old’s patience paid off when he got his first break of the match in the fifth game to take a 3-2 lead in the second. That set the tone for the rest of the match.   

While Nardi tried hard to loosen up his already sunken shoulders and calmed himself down after a few outbursts, Ramkumar grew in confidence as he ran down every ball to break his opponent once before executing a love hold to secure the third set and with that the match.  

Results (pre-quarterfinals): Singles (prefix denotes seeding): WC-Ramkumar Ramanathan (Ind) bt 1-Luca Nardi (Ita) 1-6, 6-4, 6-4; 8-Oriol Roca Batalla (Esp) bt Tristan Boyer (US) 7-5, 6-3; Maks Kasnikowski (Pol) bt 4-Benjamin Bonzi (Fra) 6-3, 6-4;  5-Adam Walton (Aus) bt SD Prajwal Dev (Ind) 6-3, 6-0; 9-Seongchan Hong (Kor) bt Q-Alexey Zakharav 6-4, 7-5; 7-Stefano Napolitano (Ita) bt Dane Sweeny (Aus) 6-3, 6-3.