Vijay Sunder, Gopika triumph
(AITA Ranking tournament, Kochi)

SATURDAY 06, FEB 2010.

Vijay Sunder Prasanth beat Mithun Murali 6-3, 5-7, 6-2 and retained the men’s title in the AITA tennis tournament. Earlier, Gopika Kapoor outlast Sansita Nandakumar 6-2, 6-1 and won her maiden women’s title.

The second-seeded Vijay appeared to be on course for an easy victory when he won the first set and led 3-1 in the next. But Mithun, who had lost all his four previous encounters against Vijay, came up with some stunning cross-court shots in the second set which caught his opponent on the wrong foot. The players repeatedly traded breaks and Mithun finally walked away with the set.

Vijay raced to a huge lead in the decider set before winning but the game points were close.

On the other hand,

Sansita had upset the top-seeded Prarthana Pratap in the pre-quarterfinal and followed it up with comfortable wins in the other rounds but playing her first final of the senior tour, she was not her usual self, frequently going into errors.

Results: Men, singles final: Vijay Sunder Prasanth (TN) bt Mithun Murali (TN) 6-3, 5-7, 6-2.

Semifinal: Vijay Sunder bt Yannick Nellord (Del) 6-0, 6-0.

Doubles final: Vijay Sunder Prasanth/Mithun Murali (TN) bt Akash Wagh (Mah)/Abijith Tiwari (Chg) 3-1 (conceded).

Women, singles final: Gopika Kapoor (Del) bt Sansita Nandakumar (TN) 6-2, 6-1.

Doubles final: Gopika Kapoor (Del)/Sagarika Phadke (Mah) bt Deepna Vazirani/Sayali Bhilare (Mah) 6-4, 6-7 (2-6), 12-10.