Second seed Somdev Devvarman made the quarterfinals of the $50,000 men’s Challenger tennis tournament in Bangkok on Wednesday.
Somdev led 7-5, 4-2 when his opponent, qualifier Andrew Whittington of Australia retired. In the quarterfinals, Somdev will play sixth seed Ti Chen of Chinese Taipei. Somdev had won a marathon against Ti Chen spread over two days, 9-7 in the fifth set, in the Davis Cup encounter in Indore last year.
Sriram Balaji had a good start but went down in three sets to Benjamin Mitchell of Astralia who had earlier put top seed Tatsuma Ito of Japan. Balaji was scheduled to play the doubles with Divij Sharan, but the duo, seeded third, withdrew as Divij did not want to aggravate a shoulder injury.
Snehadevi Reddy battled into the quarterfinals of the $15,000 ITF women’s event in Barcelona with a 6-2, 4-6, 6-4 victory over wild card Guiomar Maristany Zuleta De Reales of Spain.
In the ITF women’s tournament in Egypt, Kanika Vaidya made the singles pre-quarterfinals and the doubles quarterfinals.
In the ITF grade-1 junior tournament in Canada, Pranjala Yadlapalli made the singles pre-quarterfinals and doubles quarterfinals.
The results:
$50,000 Challenger men, Bangkok, Thailand Singles (pre-quarterfinals): Benjamin Mitchell (Aus) bt Sriram Balaji 6-7(4), 6-2, 6-3; Somdev Devvarman bt Andrew Whittington (Aus) 7-5, 4-2 (retired).
Doubles (pre-quarterfinals): Dane Propoggia & Jordan Thompson (Aus) bt James Cluskey (Irl) & Ramkumar Ramanathan 6-4, 7-6(9); Bai Yan (Chn) & Riccardo Ghedin (Ita) bt Jimmy Wang (Tpe) & Soomdev Devvarman 6-4, 6-3.
$15,000 ITF men, Calgary, Canada Doubles (pre-quarterfinals): Kevin King (US) & Sanam Singh bt Jared Hiltzik (US) & Aleksandar Vukic (Aus) 6-3, 6-2.
$25,000 ITF women, Noto, Japan Singles (first round): Kyoka Okamura (Jpn) bt Prarthana Thombare 6-4, 6-2.
$15,000 ITF women, Barcelona, Spain Singles (pre-quarterfinals): Snehadevi Reddy bt Guiomar Maristany Zuleta De Reales (Esp) 6-2, 4-6, 6-4.
$10,000 ITF women, El Kantaoui, Tunisia Singles (first round): Shivika Burman bt Yasmine Ben Abdallah (Tun) 6-0, 6-2.
Doubles (pre-quarterfinals): Mathilde Devits (Bel) & Shivika Burman bt Ferdaous Bahri & Emna Fahmia (Tun) 6-2, 6-1.
$10,000 ITF women, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt Singles (first round): Kanika Vaidya bt Dan Ni Wang (Chn) 6-4, 7-5;
Doubles (pre-quarterfinals): Yulia Bryzgalova (Rus) & Kanika Vaidya bt Nariman Abo Bakr (Egy) & Shivani Manchanda 6-0, 6-0.
ITF grade-1 juniors, Quebec, Canada Girls (second round): Pranjala Yadlapalli bt Nada Dimovska (US) 1-6, 6-4, 6-3.
Doubles (pre-quarterfinals): Jessica Hinojosa Gomez (Mex) & Pranjala Yadlapalli bt Helen Abigail Altick & Maria Mateas (US) 7-5, 6-2; Bianca Vanessa Andreescu & Katherine Sebov (Can) bt Maria Jose Portillo Ramirez (Mex) & Karman Kaur Thandi 1-6, 6-3, 10-7.
