By IANS,
New Delhi : Sriram Balaji Narayanaswamy got the measure of second seed Rohan Gide even as top seed Ranjeet Virali Murugesan outclassed eighth seed Arjun Goutham to enter the semi-final of the DSCL men’s tennis nationals at the DLTA stadium here Friday.
Sriram played with precision and restrained aggression to beat an erring Gide 7-6(5), 6-2.
In the semifinal Friday, Sriram will face Aditya Madkekar, who brushed aside Vijayant Malik 6-1,
6-2.
Ranjeet, who registered a facile 6-3, 6-4 win over Goutham, will take on seventh seed Kamala Kannan in the other semifinal. Kanan ousted third seed P.C Vignesh 6-3, 6-3.
Sriram, who impressed in his quarter-final win against Ronak Manuja Thursday, continued with his fine form as he cruised through without much difficulty.
The second seed broke Balaji in the third game of the first set. But Balaji struck back immediately to make it 2-2. Thereafter, each matched to the challenge of other to take the set to the tie-break where Balaji emerged victorious.
A dispirited Gide lacked the heart for a fightback and Balaji easily broke him in the first and the third game of the second set to book a berth among last four.
In the adjacent court, Ranjeet benefitted from a series of unforced errors by Goutham. Ranjeet rattled Goutham with his solid groundstrokes and broke his serve in the fourth game of the first set to take a 4-1 lead.
He almost had another another crack at Goutham’s serve in the eighth game but a stoic resistance from the latter saw him save six set points. Ranjit served out the set in the next game.
Goutham tried to make a comeback in the second set and threatened Ranjeet’s serve in the second game with two break points but the top-seed saved both to hold on.
Ranjeet then broke Goutham in the fifth game to win the match in little over an hour.
“I served well today. I broke him (Goutham) twice and was not broken even once, so I am very satisfied. I am acquainted with his game, so that helped. But I did not expect him to commit so many errors. He is a very consistent player,” Ranjeet said.
Goutham said that it was lack of match practice that got the better of him.
“I have not played much this year. I am into coaching a bit now. This is my third tournament this year. As a result, I was not sharp and committed a lot of errors,” Goutham said.
Ranjeet is upbeat about the semi-final against Kannan.
“I have had mixed results against Kannan. I lost to him early this year. But this has been a good year for me and I am looking forward to the challenge tomorrow,” .
In the doubles semi-final, third seeds Mithun Murali and Vinod Sridhar overcame Yannick Nelord and Saurav Sukul 6-4, 7-5 to set up a title clash with Vikram Reddy and Abhijeet Tiwari, who bested wildcards Pulkit Mishra and Ankit Sachdeva 6-3, 6-4.