Top seed Yuki Bhambri looked a pale shadow of his usual self as he exited from the singles event of the Delhi Open with a first round defeat but advanced to the doubles quarterfinals with seasoned pro Mahesh Bhupathi here on Tuesday.
It was the fourth successive first round defeat this season for the Delhi lad, who lost 4-6, 6-7(4) to Belgium’s Joris de loore, ranked 302 as to Yuki’s 99.
Yuki, who played with a lot of authority towards the end of 2015 season and broke into the top-100, was nowhere near his best, making many unforced errors in the match that lasted one hour and 40 minutes.
After dropping his serve in the second game of the opening set, Yuki was always catching up. He struggled to contain unforced errors and could not stay solid in his service games.
He saved a match point in the 10th game of the second set to make it 5-5, raising hopes of a turnaround but it never happened.
He saved another match point in the second set tie-break but hit a forehand long on the third to crash out of the $50,000 hard court event. Yuki is yet to win a match in the 2016 season.
later in the day Bhambri combined with Bhupathi to beat wild card brother pair of lakshit and Chandril Sood 4-6, 6-1, 10-2 in the opening round.
In the singles, national champion N Sriram Balaji and fellow wild card entrant N Vijay Sundar Prashanth also lost in the first round.
Balaji lost 6-7 (4), 3-6 to seventh seed Chinese Yan Bai, while Prashanth suffered defeat against Taipiei’s Jimmy Wang. In the battles of the Indians, Prajnesh Gunneswaran won 6-4, 6-4 against Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan and qualifier Vishnu Vardhan expectedly thrashed Adil Kalyanpur 6-1 6-1.
Ivanovic eases through
DUBAI: Former top-ranked Ana Ivanovic swept past Daria Gavrilova 6-1, 6-0 on Tuesday to advance to the second round of the Dubai Tennis Championships.
Ivanovic will play defending champion and top-seeded Simona Halep in the second round.
Also 21st-ranked Elina Svitolina advanced with a 6-3, 6-1 win against Slovakian qualifier Jana Cepelova.