Yuki Bhambri decimates Ramkumar

It took less than an hour for Bhambri to start the year on a rousing note as Ramkumar came a cropper against his game. The Delhi-player started well and broke Ramkumar in the first and third service games to go 3-0 up in a flash and with the Chennai player forced to play a catch-up game, it was difficult for him to stage a come-back. 

Bhambri made only three errors in the first set and the stat underlined his supremacy. He missed a drop shot and two forehand shots went off the targeted area. Every time he walked up to the net, he executed his volley to perfection. Ramkumar couldn’t do anything different in the second set, although he sniffed a couple of half chances. He had a break point in the second set and Bhambri closed out the chance with an immaculate shot down the court with perfect precision and Ramkumar had no chance to take it. 

The Tamil Nadu player’s shots were all over the court and his timing wasn’t any better. He could only win 23 points in the entire match while Bhambri won 22 out of 26 first-serve points and closed the match in his favour in emphatic fashion. Bhambri would meet Frechman Benoit Paire in the second round. Earlier, Great Britain’s Aljaz Bedene crushed Guilermo Garcia-Lopez 6-3, 6-3 to advance to the second round. 

Bedene started well with good cross-court shots and dished out unplayable serves as Lopez buckled under pressure. Bedene gave a glimpse of what was going to come when he closed his first service game, the second game of the match, with a delicate drop shot that was sheer masterclass. It was the fourth game of the first set that set tone for the match when Bedene crawled back to win the game after three-break points down. 

Two back-to-back double faults gave Lopez the upper hand but the Spaniard couldn’t do anything right as Bedene crawled back to 40-40 with a thunderous ace. Lopez couldn’t use the volley and drop shots to perfection as he wasted another break point to give Bedene the game. The Britain then upped the ante in the last three games as he broke Lopez’s serve twice to close the set 6-3.

The second set mirrored the first as Lopez made a plethora of unforced errors to hand over the match to Bedene. The Britain’s cross-court winning percentage improved and dished out good drop shots to close the match in his favour. At the outer courts, Paire beat Konstantin Kravchuk 6-3, 6-4 while Yen-Hsun Lu got the better of Radu Albot 6-2, 6-1 to move to the next round.

STADIUM COURT from 5:05 pm: M Cilic vs J Kovalik; D Sela vs H Chung; P Raja/D Sharan vs L Paes/A Sa 

COURT 1 from 5:00 pm: A Ramos-Vinolas vs S Darcis; M Demoliner/N Mektic vs R Bopanna/J Nedunchezhiyan; S Myneni/R Ramanathan vs S Darcis/B Paire 

COURT 2 from 5:00 pm: D Medvedev vs Y Lu; N Monroe/A Sitak vs K Kravchuk/M Youzhny; J Brunstrom/A Siljestrom vs G Duran/A Molteni.