NEW DELHI: Sanam Singh is in the zone. The 17-year-old is revelling in that exalted region where hitting a fuzzy ball with startling clarity of insight comes with ease.
In the zone the incredible becomes the norm. With Karan Rastogi too smacking the ball with his customary ease, the Grasscourt Nationals may well herald a new Indian proponent of tennis on vegetation. The boys are looking surprisingly good despite their aversion to the surface.
In his 6-3 6-4 decimation of seventh seed Kamla Kannan, Sanam was overwhelmingly dominant. Riding on the confidence high of a Futures win last week, the 17-year-old from Chandigarh is hitting sweet and plotting devilish.
At no point in the match, despite the scoreline being not too illustrative, did it appear that it was Kanan who was the seed and not the lanky kid across the net who was doing all the dictating.
Coming off a wrist injury that turned around due to the efforts of Dr MS Dhillon, the same man who took care of Lankan spinner M Muralitharan’s elbow, Sanam is generating phenomenal racquet head speed which when coupled with his taking the ball early makes him a seriously deadly opponent to trifle with.
The AITA intends to rejuvenate grass-court tennis in India but it has little intention of making sure there are decent courts to host the national championship. Day One of the event at the DSOI courts did not serve too many upsets apart from the frowns and scream the bounce elicited from the players.
The national body has gone quite overboard in projecting this event as its launch pad for future Davis Cup players. No doubt that we love to give players from overseas a minefield of a court but surely grooming our lot on a ground which refuses to bound true will not serve their cause too well. As always the hype fails the test of reality.
Eighth seed Yaseer Arafat Mohammad won the longest recorded tiebreak in recent history to prevail 7-6 (17), 7-6 (4) against Nikhil Murali.
Men’s singles first round
P Raja b A Madkekar 6-2, 5-7, 7-6 (4); D Sharan b R Makharia 6-2, 7-5; V Kannan b P Polavarapu 6-3, 6-4; A Singh b J Mehlda 6-0, 6-1; NVS Prasanth b D Rao 6-7 (2), 7-5, 7-6 (2); J Nedunchezhiyan b G Singh 6-2, 6-2; V Vardhan b D Kumar 6-1, 6-2; V Sehgal b S Goswami 6-1, 6-3; Y Nelord b R Muruges 6-1, 6-4; V Uppal b S Myneni 6-2, 6-4; Sanam Singh b K Kannan 6-3, 6-4; N Singh b S Ali 6-3, 6-2
Ladies singles:
R Chakravarthi b N Rana 6-0, 6-0; P Sharma b S Goel 6-0, 7-6 (4); S Jalali b N Batra 6-2, 6-4; S Nagaraj b A Nandakumar 6-3, 6-1; P Reddy b N Karsolia 6-2, 6-1; G Manohar b V Chettri 6-1, 6-4; L Pereira b V Sheoran 6-0, 6-3; A Venkataraman b S Phadke 6-0, 6-0; P Goswami b O Ram 6-3, 6-0; P Appineni b R Svarupa 6-2, 6-2; C Rajur b K Mehta 6-2, 6-0; S Bhambri b S Sahoo 6-3, 6-3; S Phadke b K Ahuja 4-6, 6-1, 6-2; S Solanki b P Tohan 6-4, 6-1; M Panuganti b R Keswani 6-1, 7-5; I Lakhani b S Jaiswal 6-0, 6-0
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