Saketh, Ramkumar win doubles crown
Bengaluru, 12 Feb: India’s Saketh Myneni and Ramkumar Ramanathan won the doubles title of the Bengaluru Open ATP Challenger after dominating their French rivals Hugo Grenier and Alexandre Muller in the final here on Saturday.
Banking on the support of the local crowd, the Indian pair won 6-3 6-2 at the KSLTA Stadium. This was Saketh’s ninth doubles title at Challengers while Ramkumar registered his third victory in as many weeks.
Meanwhile, qualifier Borna Gojo of Croatia rallied brilliantly from a set down to put up a fantastic display in the last two sets against Frenchman Alexandre Muller and storm into the final of the singles event where he will clash with Taipei’s Chun-hsin Tseng for the title.
Tseng scripted an upset victory (7-5, 6-4) over sixth seed Enzo Couacaud, also of France, after being 2-5 down in the first set.
The combination of the fast serves of Ramkumar and the deft volleys by Saketh proved to be a deadly combination as the duo raced to a 4-1 lead before annexing the first set at 6-3.
A visibly tired Muller, who had played two matches yesterday and Grenier could not contain the onslaught of winners from the Indian pair and succumbed without much fight.
The Gojo-Muller proved to a perfect match as both the players held their serves until the ninth game where Gojo lost his serve and eventually the set.
The second set also followed a similar pattern until Gojo broke his opponent’s serve to go 5-3 up and held his serve to make his way back into the match. The momentum helped him so much that he did not give a semblance of a chance for his rival to make a comeback as he blanked Muller on the back of three breaks. (PTI)