Rawat causes biggest flutter at Bengaluru Open
Sidharth Rawat of India created the biggest flutter on the opening day of the Bengaluru Open 2002 when he ousted Borna Gojo ranked more than 200 places above him to make it to the pre-quarterfinals of the US $ 162,500 Challenger event at the KSLTA on Monday. The Delhi lad rallied after being a set down to finally emerge a 3-6, 7-6(3), 7-6(3) winner in a match that lasted 1 hour and 52 minutes.
Slated for the last match of the day, Sidharth was staring at defeat while being down 2-5 in the decider, Rawat, having reserved the best for the last pulled up his socks and came back strongly, mostly with deep shots and was helped by two double faults from the Croatian won the next for games with a break in the ninth game. An early 5-1 lead in the tie-break helped the Indian to cruise through. This was after Gojo had clinched the first set with two breaks in the fourth and eight game while losing his serve in the fifth.
The recovery began from the second set where his Rawat’s serve improved and both held their serves to decide via tie-breaker.
“I am thrilled with the result, more so with my game as it fell in place when it was needed,” said an elated Rawat.
Results (Round-1)
Mukund Sasikumar (IND) bt Blaz Kavcic (SLO) 2-6, 6-3, 6-4;
Malek Jaziri (TUN) bt [WC] Arjun Kadhe (IND) 6-2, 7-6(5);
Saketh Myneni (IND) bt Aslan Karatsev (RUS) 6-3, 6-3
Laurent Lokoli (FRA) bt Adam Pavlasek (CZE) 6-3, 7-6(4);
Vaclav Safranek (CZE) bt Fabrizio Ornago (ITA) 7-6(5), 7-5;
Vladyslav Orlov (UKR) bt [WC] Suraj Prabodh (IND) 6-2, 6-2;
Khumoyun Sultanov (UZB) bt [WC] Prajwal Dev (IND) 6-2, 6-1;
Filippo Baldi (ITA) bt Evgeny Karlovskiy (RUS) 6-2, 7-5
Frederico Ferreira Silva (POR) bt Karim-Mohamed Maamoun (EGY) 6-1, 3-6, 6-0
[WC] Niki Poonacha (IND) bt [WC] Adil Kalyanpur (IND) 6-4, 6-7(5), 7-6(4)
Matthew Ebden (AUS) bt Tsung-Hua Yang (TPE) 6-0, 4-6, 7-6(2)
Sidharth Rawat (IND) bt Borna Gojo (CRO) 3-6, 7-6(3), 7-6(3)
Qualifying (Semifinals)
Anirudh Chandrashekar (IND) bt Nikshep Ravikumar 6-3, 6-4
Abhinav Shanmugam (IND) bt [WC] Rishi Reddy (IND) 6-4, 6-2
