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Home  » Sports » Mankad-Uppal win ITF doubles

Mankad-Uppal win ITF doubles

March 29, 2003 21:23 IST
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The Indian pair of Harsh Mankad and Vishal Uppal claimed the doubles honours while Austrian Zbynek Mlynarik lifted the singles title in the ITF men's Futures tennis tournament in Kolkata on Saturday.

The doubles final, an all-Indian affair, saw Mankad and Uppal humble the fourth seeded combination of Vijay Kannan and Ajay Ramaswamy in straight sets 6-1, 6-4 at the BTA tennis complex.

Mlynarik gave an awesome demonstration of powerful ground strokes and serves to win his second Futures title in a week. He prevailed over Marcel Felder of Uruguay 6-3, 6-4 in the final.

The triumph earned him 18 ITF points and a prize-money of US $1,950, while Felder had to be content with US $1350 and 12 ITF points.

Mlynarik, who had won the Mumbai leg of the Futures last week by outclassing Rohan Bopanna in the final, broke his opponent in the first and fifth games, but the Uruguyan broke back in the sixth.

However, Mlynarik played his shots well to again break Felder in the ninth game to take the set 6-3.

The Austrian kept up the momentum in the second set to open up a 5-2 lead, but at that point Felder raised his game by several notches and broke Mlynarik in the ninth to reduce the margin to 4-5.

But serving to level the score and save the match, Felder suddenly became a bundle of nerves and committed two double-faults to concede the set 4-6 and surrender the match after an 83-minute fight.

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