Top seed Tseng out in second round

CHENNAI: Top seed Chun-Hsin Tseng crashed out of the Chennai Open Challenger singles competition in just the second round after he suffered a 2-6, 4-6 defeat at the hands of American Nicolas Moreno De Alboran at the SDAT Tennis Stadium here on Wednesday.

In the first match of the day on Centre Court, World No.219 Moreno broke Tseng in the second and fourth game besides holding serve thrice, racing to a 5-0 lead in the first set. Tseng, ranked 132, then managed to win back-to-back games before the American broke the Chinese Taipei player again – in the eighth game – to close out the opener comfortably.

In the second set, Tseng managed to open up a 4-2 lead after breaking Moreno’s serve in the fifth game. But, the 25-year-old Moreno bagged four consecutive games, thanks to breaks in the eighth and tenth game, to wrap up the match in one hour and 30 minutes and seal a quarter-final berth. The seventh-seeded Dalibor Svrcina of the Czech Republic bowed out as Japan’s Yasutaka Uchiyama defeated him by a 6-1, 6-7(10), 6-4 scoreline.

In doubles, two all-Indian pairs – top seeds N Sriram Balaji/Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan and wildcards Sumit Nagal/Mukund Sasikumar – progressed to the last-eight stage after crossing the first hurdle. Arjun Kadhe, combining with Jay Clarke of Great Britain, also made it to the quarter-finals while two all-Indian duos were knocked out in the first round.

RESULTS:

Singles: Second round: Nicolas Moreno De Alboran bt Chun-Hsin Tseng 6-2, 6-4; Yasutaka Uchiyama bt Dalibor Svrcina 6-1, 6-7(10), 6-4; Arthur Cazaux bt Seong-chan Hong 6-3, 6-4; Dane Sweeny bt James McCabe 6-2, 6-1

Doubles: First round: N Sriram Balaji/Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan bt Frederico Ferreira Silva/Nicolas Moreno De Alboran 6-4, 7-5; Petr Nouza/Andrew Paulson bt Marc Polmans/Max Purcell 6-4, 6-4; JiSung Nam/MinKyu Song bt Ramkumar Ramanathan/Vishnu Vardhan 1-6, 7-6(4), 10-5; Ryan Peniston/Dalibor Svrcina bt Anirudh Chandrasekar/N Vijay Sundar Prashanth 6-7(7), 6-1, 10-7; Jay Clarke/Arjun Kadhe bt Dayne Kelly/Dane Sweeny 3-6, 6-3, 10-7; Francesco Maestrelli/Luca Nardi bt Calum Puttergill/Akira Santillan 6-2, 6-3; Sumit Nagal/Mukund Sasikumar bt Yu Hsiou Hsu/Christopher Rungkat 7-6(12), 2-1 (retired); Sebastian Ofner/Nino Serdarusic bt Dimitar Kuzmanov/Hamad Medjedovic 7-5, 6-4