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U-14 tennis: Aditya Rai overpowers Ingole, 6-1
From the outset, Rai’s gameplan appeared to be clear as day as he looked to target his opponent’s backhand.
On a warm Tuesday afternoon, it was the second seed and highest ranked player left in the tournament, Aditya Rai, who managed to overpower his unseeded opponent Pranav Ingole, to win 6-1 in an under-14 pre-quarterfinal match at the first leg of PMDTA-KPIT Junior Champion Series Tennis Tournament held at the Maharashtriya Mandal Lawn Tennis Academy Tennis Courts, Mukundnagar.
From the outset, Rai’s gameplan appeared to be clear as day as he looked to target his opponent’s backhand. Having played him a few times in the past, the second seed knew that Ingole’s topspin shots on his backhand were his Achilles’ heel and his failure to win too many points from those situations is what eventually cost the 13-year-old the game.
Ingole had his strong serves to rely on, but Rai still managed to push his opponent on the backfoot, playing some amazing cross-court shots to tire him in the initial stages of the match. This strategy worked to fruition as the second seed won the first four games, breaking his opponent’s serve twice.
At 4-0, Ingole managed to win his first and only game of the contest, but it proved to be too little too late. Not once after that game did he manage to reach a game score of 40 – which highlighted the gulf in class among the two opponents.
In another pre-quarterfinal matchup, the unseeded Amod Sabnis continued his fairytale run by vanquishing the top seeded Arnav Oruganty 6-3. Not seen by many as one of the frontrunners to win the tournament, Sabnis has wowed a number of people with his impressive forehand stroke play over the past two days.
In the girls’ under-12 quarterfinals, seventh seed Nishita Desai triumphed over the second seeded Gayatri Mishra 6-5 (5) in an eleven-game thriller, while the unseeded Mrunal Shelke upset the fifth seed Durga Birajdar 6-2.
