Pune boy Arjun Kadhe along with his partner Sriram Balaji beat the Austrian-German duo in Phillip Oswald and Tim Puetz by a 7-6, 4-6, 10-8 scoreline at the ATP Maharashtra Open at the Shiv Chhatrapati Balewadi Sports Complex on Monday.
The first set looked extremely difficult to call with Kadhe and his partner Balaji edged it by a 7-6 scoreline. After losing their serve, the managed to peg their way back into the contest to edge their opponents in the tie-break.
However, in the second, it was all Oswald and Puetz as they dominated their Indian opposition from start to end before breaking their serve midway through the second set.
The match tiebreaker however swayed in favour of the Indian duo as they managed to win the decisive set 10-8 to seal a berth in the second round.
In the other Indian game on the day, a rusty Prajnesh Gunneswaran was far from his best and was knocked out of the ATP Maharashtra Open, losing in straight sets to American Michael Mmoh, here Monday.
The game which earned him impressive results in the 2018 season was nowhere to be seen as he lost 5-7 3-6 to his American opponent, ranked 103, in one hour and 14 minutes.
{{/usCountry}}The game which earned him impressive results in the 2018 season was nowhere to be seen as he lost 5-7 3-6 to his American opponent, ranked 103, in one hour and 14 minutes.
{{/usCountry}}It has been a decent venue for Prajnesh as he made two Challenger level finals here - one just weeks back but free-flowing unforced errors never let him dictate the points.
He lost the very first game of the match and struggled to win two points together. He broke back in the sixth game during which he played the point of the match.
Mmoh dictated the points and dropped the ball away from Prajnesh, who though took about six-seven steps to hammer a passing winner which eventually won him the match.