Indian tennis star Sumit Nagal crashed out of the third edition of Tata Open Maharashtra at Mhalunge Balewadi Stadium in Pune on Monday. The Indian tennis star, who had a good 2019 season, went down fighting against Victor Troika of Serbia. India’s second-ranked player Nagal lost 6–2, 6–7, 1–6 against the former world number 12.
Nagal, who was the talk of the town after he took a set away against legendary Roger Federer during his Grand Slam debut at 2019 US Open, did put up a tough fight before going down to the former World number 12. The experienced Serbian had an easy outing against the Indian as Victor Troika’s effortlessly took control of the first set 6-2. Nagal however, did not allow the Serbian to just have a cakewalk and came flooding back and won the tie-breaker in a high voltage tussle in the second set 6-7 to force a decider. In the decider, the 22-year old Indian looked helpless and exhausted as he surrendered 1-6 to the former world No 12.
The Serbian star Troicki had entered the main draw with an easy 6-2, 6-4 win over Evgeny Karlovskiy of Russia in the final singles qualifying round match on Sunday.
In other men’s singles match later in the day another Indian Ramkumar Ramanathan was shown the door by seventh seed Italian Salvatore Caruso. India No 3 Ramanathan lost 3-6, 6-4, 7-5 to Caruso to be knocked out of the championship.
Earlier, Saketh Mayeni, who won a gold medal at the Incheon Asian Games 2014 with Sania Mirza, failed to make the cut to the main draw of the competition after he lost 3-6, 2-6 in straight sets to Serbian Tennis player Nikola Milojević.
Later on Tuesday in the singles event, India’s Arjun Kadhe will lock horns with Czech tennis player Jiří Veselý. In the men’s doubles, event Indo-Aussie pair of Leander Paes and Matthew Ebden will be facing Indo-Kiwi pair of Divij Sharan and Artem Sitak.
