By IANS,
New Delhi : India’s wilcard Yuki Bhambri made short work of Israeli qualifier Saar Steele in the first round of the $15,000 BHEL International Tennis Federation (ITF) men’s Futures on a searing day at the DLTA complex here Tuesday.
The junior Australian Open champion played an all-round game to swiftly demolish the 24-year-old Israeli 6-2, 6-3.
Yuki, who has been training at the famous Nick Bollettieri Academy, Florida, for four months, served impeccably and showed a vast repertoire of shots.
Such was the 16-year-old’s command that Steele could only eke out two games in the first set and was broken twice.
Yuki kept up the momentum in the second set and, with a break of serve in the third and the ninth game, won the set and the match in three quarters of an hour.
In another other first round match, top seed Raven Klaasen of South Africa was stretched to the limit by an impressive Navdeep Singh, who could not clinch a match-point in the tenth game of the decider, and eventually went down 7-6(5), 6-7(2), 5-7 in a three-hour marathon.
On the adjacent court, sixth seed Divij Sharan was upset by American Adam El Mithdawy, losing 6-7 (5), 1-6 while fifth seed Vishnu Vardhan escaped with a 5-7, 6-4, 7-6(5) win against by Thailand’s Peerakit Siributwong.