Tennis News
World Group Play-offs 2008, Bucharest, Romania (Red clay)

India l Romania 1-4

Rubber 4 -
Prakash Amritraj (IND,222) vs Victor Hanescu (ROU,67) 62 63 61

Hanescu grabbed this match and tie for Romania in 100 mins ... In this match Hanescu faced 1 bp in 6th game of 2nd set ... I think thats only once Hanescu gave chance to opponent in this Davis cup tie ... So with this dominating performance from Hanescu Romania won this tie easily to move into World group.

Rubber 5 -
Somdev Devvarman (IND,242) l Victor Crivoi (ROU,158) 64 57 36

Crivoi fought back into this match after down 1-5 in the first set ... He saved 4 set points but lost set 6-4 ... But that turnaround in first set helped him ahead in this match ... In seond set Somi broke Crivoi's serve in 5th game then he was serving for that match at 5-4 ... But Crivoi had other ideas, he broke Somi's serve twice to win set 7-5 ... Crivoi continued his upperhand in third set winning next 5 games ... Crivoi won consecutive 8 games, after that Somi hold twice and broke Crivoi's serve once ... Bu that wasn't enough and Crivoi won set 6-3 ... This match was going on for 2 hrs 33 min, 105 pts to Crovoi and 99 to Somi.

For me our performance in this tie was average ... 1-4 loss was majority people were expecting but Somi lost chance of making 2-3 and importnatly scoring his first Davis cup win.

This tie turned into very hard learning curve for Somi ... He reached early for preparation, played well in couple of tournaments and so we all were having expectations from him as this tie was on clay ... But playing under Davis cup pressure in away tie is total different proposition altogether without patriot crowd support ... I m only hoping that Somi learn from this tie and improve ... Somi need to improve his middle court game, he learn to dominate and kill ball from there ... So now we r back to Asia-Oceania zone.
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At $576K Bangkok ATP Open, Thailand

[Q1] Rohan Bopanna (IND,349) bt (7) Mikhail Ledovskikh (RUS,260) 76(5) 67(2) 75
[Q1] (4) Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi (PAK,206) bt Peter Gojowczyk (GER,322) 67(8) 76(4) 64

[Q2] Rohan Bopanna (IND,349) vs (3) Lukas Dlouhy (CZE,167)
[Q2] (4) Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi (PAK,206) vs (6) Luka Gregorc (SLO,237)

Doubles -
[R1] (1) Leander Paes (IND)/ Lukas Dlouhy (CZE) vs Rohan Bopanna (IND)/ Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi (PAK)

Very close match as Russian was also very big server ... In last game Rohan found a wayto break Ledovskikh first serve to win the match in 2 hrs 16 mins ... Both plyers had 21 aces ... Russian won more points 111 to 107 but lost in the end.
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At $145K Hansol Korea Open , Seoul

[Q1] UBEROI Shikha (IND,757) l NAMIGATA Junri (JPN,230) 16 16
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At $35K+H Bucharest Challenger II, Romania (Red clay)

[R1] Somdev Devvarman (IND,242) vs (7) Dominik Meffert (GER,180)

Doubles -
[R1] Prakash Amritraj (IND)/ Richard Bloomfield (GBR) vs Matteo Marrai (ITA)/ Simone Vagnozzi (ITA)

Again Somi facing tough first round against seeded player ... This week Prakash also decided to play on red clay though in doubles with Richard Bloomfield.