CHENNAI: Second seed and one of the tournament favourites, N Sriram Balaji, had a comfortable 6-3, 6-3 win over Matias Castro of Argentina and moved into the second round of the MCC-SRS ITF Men’s tennis Futures championships at the Madras Cricket Club courts.
Serving with precision and returning strongly, Sriram dominated the proceedings and never gave Matias any chance. In another match, sixth-seeded Karunodoy Singh was made to toil in the first set by Chandril Sood. But Karunodoy stayed ahead in the tiebreak to seal the first set. Thereafter, he grew in confidence to take the second set 6-3. Local lad Mukund Sasikumar did well to ease past Akash Wagh 6-3,6-2, while another Chennai boy Elwin Anthony, a wild card, displayed his fighting skills and scored a well-fought straight set win over Lakshit Sood.
Results: Singles (first round): Elwin Anthony bt Lakshit Sood 6-4, 7-5, Sasi Kumar Mukund bt Akash Wagh 6-3, 6-2, Sidharth Rawat bt Fahad 6-3, 6-0, K Singh bt Chandril Sood 7-6 (3), 6-3, N Sriram Balaji bt Matias Castro (ARG) 6-3, 6-3. Doubles (Ist round): Sriram Balaji/Murugesan R bt Loic Perret (SUI)/ Suraj R 6-1, 6-2, Kunal Anand/Ronit Singh bt R Thomas (FRA)/Yannick 7-5, 7-6(4), Anvit Bendre/Akash Wagh bt M Jayaprakash/ Vinayak Sharma 6-2, 6-2, M Christopher/Karunuday bt Shanmugam/ Udayakumar Reddy 6-1, 6-4, Sagar/Jatin bt Antoine-Michel (SUI)/Jessy K (SUI) 6-4, 3-6 (10-6), Kaliyanda Pooncha/P Vignesh bt Sasi Kumar/Suresh Kumar 6-2, 6-3; Jeevan/Prashanth bt Ivan Gakhov (RUS)/Mikhail Korvin (RUS) 6-4, 3-6, 10-6.