By IANS,
New Delhi : Vivek Shokeen overcame a cramping Vijayant Malik 3-6, 6-4, 7-5 to enter the second round of the $15,000 International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournament in hot and humid conditions at the DLTA complex here Monday.
Shokeen has thus beaten teenager Malik for the second successive time, having beaten him in straight sets in an ITF tournament in Kolkata last year.
Shokeen was erratic to start with and paid for it with the first set, dropping his serve in the eighth game. The Delhi youngster’s exit looked imminent when he dropped his serve again in the fifth game of the second set, but he broke back in the eighth.
A couple of errors from Malik in the tenth game set up a break point for Shokeen and he converted it rifling a forehand down the middle.
In the decider, both the players kept up the pressure by serving well before Malik called for a medical time-out after the eighth game for cramps in his right leg. He hobbled his way to hold his serve for 5-5.
Malik limped to a triple break-point in the next game that twice went to deuce before Shokeen survived. He then broke Malik, who had difficulty to even stand, to serve out the set and the match, lasting two hours and 20 minutes.
At the adjacent court, wildcard entrants Maharashtra’s Ronak Manuja and Abhijeet Tiwari played to a standstill before the former won 7-5, 7-6(3).
Ronak, with his big serve and power-packed strokes, broke Abhijeet in the eleventh game of the match and then held his serve to take the first set.
Ronak, 17, gaining an early break, was serving for the match in the tenth game, but dropped it and had to work hard to prevail in the tie-breaker.
In the other first round singles matches, P.C. Vignesh rallied from a set down to beat national runner-up Srirambalaji Narayanaswamy 4-6, 6-3, 6-1 while Vikram Reddy defeated Uzbek Vaja Uzakov 6-3, 7-6(4).