Myneni beats Barton to book his place in the quarters of ATP Delhi challengers

WORLD NO.166 Saketh Myneni defeated World no.273 Mathew Barton 6-3, 6-4 in round two of the ATP Delhi Challengers today. The Indian has now booked his place in the quarter-finals of the singles event. 

Myneni served well and won a decent percentage of points in both his first and second serve. The no.4 seed also didn’t commit a single double-fault throughout the match. While Myneni broke the Australian twice in the match to seal set one and two, the Hyderabad lad didn’t face a single break-point on his own serve. 

In the end, Myneni won 62 points as compared to Barton’s 44 and finished the match in exactly an hour’s time. 

A little later in the day, qualifier Vishnu Vardhan lost a close second round encounter to Zhe Li 6-3, 3-6, 3-6. Despite slamming 18 aces, the Indian couldn’t press home the advantage and got broken on three occasions to hand over the edge to the Chinese.  

In the end, it came down to the final set and a few tight points. Unfortunately for the Indian fans, Li held his nerve and finished the tie in just inside the two-hour mark. Looking back, Vardhan would be disappointed with how poorly his second serve came out. In the quarters, Myneni and Zhe Li will lock horns for a place in the semi-finals. 

In the women’s draw of the USD 25,000 ITF event, India’s Ankita Raina beat her Russian opponent 6-1, 6-4 in round two. Both players were put to the test in some trying conditions and both the girls committed a series of errors. 

However, Ankita did enough with her serve at the crucial junctures obtained some crucial breaks and served out the match in straight sets. At the moment, Ankita is the only Indian left in the girl’s main draw.