One of India’s most improved player from 2018, Sasi Kumar Mukund, who was also in the Davis Cup reserves last week, played a near-perfect match on Tuesday to post an easy 6-3, 6-1 win over Sebastian Fanselow of Germany in the second round of the men’s singles at the ATP Chennai Open challenger tournament at the SDAT tennis stadium here on Tuesday.
The 22-year-old began by easily holding serve before putting pressure on Fanselow’s serve and quickly had four break points in the second game of the match, though he was could not capitalise on them. The Indian came up with some deep returns that pegged the German to the baseline and induced errors regularly.
In the fourth game of the first set, Sasi Kumar broke the German to love taking a 4-2 lead. Serving for the set, the Indian had a small scare facing break point once but saved it with an ace and then produced a beautiful backhand down the line winner to clinch it 6-3.
One-way traffic
The German’s service games were poor — he served eight double faults in the match. The match slipped away him in the opening game of the second set when he served two double faults and was broken. It was one-way traffic from there on with Sasi Kumar breaking him thrice in the set, winning 10 of the last 11 points to seal the match.
Speaking after the match, Mukund said, “I was happy with the way I played today. I was anticipating a much tougher match as he has played in a couple of quarterfinals before coming here.
“I was coming from grass and I arrived here really late so I wasn’t expecting too much from my game today, but I am happy it came off well.”
The two other Indians in the singles main draw did not have a great day with Manish Sureshkumar losing to Brydan Klein 6-2, 6-3 in the first round, while Sumit Nagal lost to Duckhee Lee 6-3, 6-4 in the second round.
The results:
Second round: Mohamed Safwat (Egy) bt Andrea Pellegrino (Ita) 6-3, 7-5; Sasi Kumar Mukund bt Sebastian Fanselow (Ger) 6-3, 6-1; Duckhee Lee (Kor) bt Sumit Nagal 6-3, 6-4; Andrew Harris (Aus) bt Tsung-Hua Yang (Tpe) 6-2, 6-1; Alejandro Davidovich Fokina (Esp) bt Renta Tokuda (Jpn) 3-6, 6-2, 6-3; Nicola Kuhn (Esp) bt Antoine Escoffier (Fra) 4-6, 7-6(5), 4-0 (retd.)
First round: Luke Saville (Aus) bt Moez Echargui (Tun) 7-6, 6-1; Brydan Klein (GBr) bt Manish Sureshkumar 6-2, 6-3; Alexander Zhurbin (Rus) bt Ricardo Ojeda Lara (Esp) 6-2, 6-4; Collin Altamirano (USA) bt Kaito Uesugi (Jpn) 1-6, 6-3, 7-6(8); Ian Gakhov (Rus) bt Dayne Kelly (Aus) 7-6, 6-3.