Sunitha in pre-quarters in ITF women’s tennis

Kolkata, Nov 18: India's Sunitha Rao sailed into the pre-quarter finals with a straight-set decimation of the US's Alexis Prousis at the Gujarat NRE Coke USD 50,000 ITF Women's Challengers here Tuesday.

Fifth seeded Sunitha blasted Prousis 6-0, 6-2 in only 73 minutes on the synthetic court of the Bengal Tennis Association (BTA) complex to book a berth in the last 16.

Prousis opened the proceedings with a 40-15 lead in the first game, but Sunitha came back very strongly and broke the American, who was demolished in the third game also as she committed two double faults.

Prousis tried to make a comeback in the fifth, but squandered six game points before losing out. Sunitha made no mistakes in the sixth and wrapped up the set without losing a single game.

In the second set, Prousis was broken in the first, fifth and seventh, while Sunitha dropped serve in the fourth.

Indian Wild Card entrant Shikha Uberoi lost to seventh seed Ksenia Palkina of Kazakhstan 6-2, 6-3 in only 80 minutes.

In the opening set, Uberoi was broken in the first, fifth and seventh games, while Palkina lost serve in the fourth. Both the players served badly with Palkina serving three double faults and Uberoi five. In the second set, Uberoi was broken in the fifth and ninth games.

Third seeded Chinese Taipei girl Chin-Wei Chan was ousted 1-6, 2-6 by in-form Serbian qualifier Bojana Jovanovski, who was a semifinalist in last week's $25000 ITF Circuit in Pune. The match was closer than the scoreline suggests, with most of the games went into deuces.

Top seed Melanie South of Britain was stretched by China's Jing-Jing Lu. South prevailed 7-5,6-2 in 91 minutes.

Results of Matches played Tuesday (Read Player, Status/Seed, Country, ITF Ranking):

Singles First Round: Melanie South (1)(GBr)(116) beat Jing-Jing Lu (Chn)(247) 7-5,6-3; Elora Dabija (Rou)(433) beat Angelika Roesch (Ger)(327) 6-7(5-7),6-2,6-2; Leonie Mekel (Ned)(460) beat Liana-Gabriela Ungur (6)(Rou)(223) 6-3 (Retd.); Julia Glushko(Isr)(355) beat Silvia Disderi (Q)(Isr)(571) 6-2,6-3; Ksenia Palkina (7)(Kgz)(224) beat Shikha Uberoi (WC)(Ind)(713) 6-2,6-3; Chia-Jung Chuang (Tpe)(462) beat I-Hsuan Hwang (Tpe)(270) 6-1,6-2; Bojana Jovanovski (Q)(Srb)(561) beat Chin-Wei Chan (3)(Tpe)(199) 6-1,6-2; Sunitha Rao (5)(Ind)(206) beat Alexis Prousis (USA)(299) 6-0,6-2; Emily Webley-Smith (!)(GBr)(475) beat Florence Haring (Q)(Fra)(273) 7-5,6-4; Ayumi Morita (2)(Jpn)(118) beat Laura Siegemund (Ger)(307) 6-1,6-2.

Doubles First Round : Kai-Chen Chang (Tpe) & I-Hsuan Hwang (Tpe)(4)(401) beat Prerana-Mythri Appineni (Ind) & Sanduska Patrycja (Rou)(1219) 6-4,6-1; Sophie Ferguson (Aus) & Alexis Prousis (USA)(703) beat Iulia Kiriienko (Ukr) & Inna Kuzmenko (Rus) 6-3,7-6(90-7).

--IANS