Ramkumar Ramanathan Enters Final Qualifying Round At Maha Open ATP Challenger

Unseeded Indian Ramkumar Ramanathan pulled off an upset win against top seed Elias Ymer of Sweden to enter the final qualifying round of the Maha Open ATP Challenger 100 tennis championship in Pune on Sunday. The 30-year-old Ramanathan took revenge of his Davis Cup loss last year against the top seeded Swede, winning 5-7,6-1,6-4 in the match that lasted one hour and 52 minutes. The 28-year-old Ymer played solid tennis to wrap up the first set. But Ramanathan fought back with his attacking serve and volley game to win the second set.

The Chennai player couldn’t break Ymer in the third game, but did manage to get a break in the fifth to win the match.

Ramanathan, currently ranked 403, served nine aces in the match to move into the final round qualifying.

In other matches, sixth seeded Russian Ilia Simakin took one hour 15 minutes to get past India No. 2 Mukund Sasikumar, winning 6-4, 6-3 to also advance to the final round qualifying.

Twelfth seeded Matthew Dellavedova of Australia proved too experienced for 16-year-old wildcard Arnav Vijay Paparkar, winning 6-2, 6-3. Paparkar showed glimpses of his quality but could not get past the experienced Australian.

Former winner of the Maha Open ATP Tour and currently ranked 35 in the world, Jiri Vesely, who is making a comeback, proved strong for local wildcard Siddhant Banthia, winning 6-2, 6-3.

Eleventh seeded South African Kris Van Wyk had to toil hard against wildcard entrant Nitin Kumar Sinha before eventually winning 7-5, 7-5, while fourth seeded Blake Ellis of Australia quelled a first set challenge before accounting for another Indian wildcard Sidharth Rawat 7-5 ,6-2.

In the other two upsets of the day, Russian Petr Bar Biryukov beat second seeded Oleksandr Ovcharenko of Ukraine 6-3, 7-6(6), while Japanese Hiroki Moriya ousted fifth seeded Jacopo Berrettini of Italy 7-5, 6-3.

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