CHENNAI: The opening match of the Chennai Open on centre court in the SDAT stadium between Thiago Monteiro of Brazil and Daniil Medvedev of Russia was touted as battle between equals, but after initial promise, turned out to be a one-sided affair with Medvedev winning 6-3, 6-3 convincingly.
Meanwhile, young gun Borna Coric, who reached last year’s final, was shocked by 20-year-old Korean Hyeon Chung in straight sets.
Both of them were meeting each other in an ATP tour game for the first time. It did not look like an opening day game as the crowd was sparse, but still the duo gave some cheer to die-hard fans with some long rallies.
The tall and athletic Russian served well and with his excellent returns, kept testing Monteiro’s erratic back-hand. But Monteiro excelled in his net-play, often to the dislike of Medvedev, who was comfortable with hitting his groundstrokes from the base-line.
At one point, Medvedev was almost exhausted when the sixth game of the first set began. This was the opportunity for Monteiro to go for the kill, but his first serves were poor and second lacked fire.
Thereafter, both committed identical mistakes and deuces were the order of the remaining games. The pressure was such that Medvedev once double faulted when the score line read 40-all. But finally the Russian’s perseverance helped him move in to the second round.
In another first round match on the outer courts, Dudi Sela of Israel, ranked World No 90, defeated Damir Dzumhur of Bosnia who is 12 places ahead of him in the rankings chart. Sela’s aggressive play and excellent groundstrokes helped him to a fluent 6-2, 6-2 win. In another centre court match, Coric, the runner-up of the last edition and playing his first major game after a knee injury went down in the opening round. He was a bit rusty initially. But as the match progressed, he started getting back his rhythm.
But qualifier Chung of Korea seemed to be better prepared. Having played two matches in the qualifying rounds, his game was top notch and he matched the wits of the Croat and at times even bettered him. His ability to up the tempo at will irked Coric as he became error prone and lost the first set 3-6. In the second, he showed his fighting skills and took the score to 5-5. Once again Chung, who is tipped for great things by a fair few, played aggressively with his forehand helping him edge past his fancied rival 6-3, 7-5.
ashok.v@newindianexpress.com