It was a mixed day for the Indian tennis contingent participating at the Australian Open qualifiers after Indian tennis star Prajnesh Gunneshwaran advanced into the next round of the Australian Open qualifiers while Ramkumar Ramanathan and Ankita Raina were knocked out of the tournament after facing defeats.
Prajnesh, India’s top-ranked singles player at 122, was up against local wild card Harry Bourchier, and he hardly broke a sweat to clinch straight sets victory over his opponent. Prajnesh registered an easy 6-2 6-4 victory over Harry Bourchier and advance into the second round of the tournament. Prajnesh will next be pitted against Germany’s Yannick Hanfmann.
Prajnesh Gunneshwaran had started the new decade with a 7-5 6-3 victory over Jason Kubler at the Apis Canberra International in Australia. However, his happiness was short-lived after he was ousted from the tournament after losing in the second round of the event.
Ramkumar Ramanathan, on the other hand, gave away the first set lead to bring down curtains to his campaign at the qualifiers. Ramkumar Ramanathan who was facing 15th seed Argentine Federico Coria took the first set 6-4. However, the Argentine made a strong comeback to dominate the Indian and took the second set 6-4. In the third set, Federico Coria looked more threatening and determined as he did not allow the Indian to take points easily and dominated the third set completely to take clinch the game 6-4 4-6 1-6.
In the women’s qualifiers the only Indian contender Ankita Raina, India number one tennis player, went down fighting against 2-6 6-7(2) against Bulgaria’s Viktoriya Tomova.
India’s biggest hope in the qualifiers of the Australian Open Sumit Nagal is scheduled to begin his campaign at the qualifiers on Thursday against Egypt’s Mohamed Safwat. Sumit had a breakthrough 2019 season which saw the Indian winning a set against legendary Swiss tennis star Roger Federer at the US Open.
