Punna Vishal reached his first-ever semifinal while Tushar Liberhan saw his good run come to end against the seasoned Aisam Ul-Haq Qureshi of Pakistan at the $10,000 ONGC ITF Futures men's tennis tournament in Dehradun on Friday.
Qualifier Vishal did not play his best tennis but his opponent Naim Lalji of Britain was even more erratic and wasted five set points to give the Indian a 6-3, 7-5 quarterfinal win at the Doon School complex.
The 18-year-old Liberhan, another qualifier, had an amazing run this week but third seed Qureshi proved too good for him and won 6-3, 6-4 to book a semifinal berth.
Qureshi will take on unseeded Dmitry Mazur of Uzbekistan who scalped Russian Mikhail Ledovskikh, for a 6-2, 6-3 win.
A good start might have helped Liberhan in keeping a check on Qureshi but the Pakistani was off to a flier. He broke the Indian in the second game to go 3-0 up in the first set, and then again in the third game of the second to wrap up the match in an hour and a minute.
Liberhan knew where he stood and showed great maturity in playing within himself. He had nothing to lose and could have gone all out, but the teenager avoided anything fancy and concentrated on discipline.
The result was a mostly error free game from the Indian and Qureshi began to feel the heat from the second half of first set. The Pakistani, now, despite the huge difference in ranking and experience, started to try and pump himself up.
Liberhan though put his head down and concentrated on playing one point at a time. Perhaps, the satisfaction of having made thus far in his maiden Futures tournament gave him the poise.
At the end of the match, he was yet to decide whether to play in Delhi next week in the $10,000 event as, ranked 120 in the junior list, he might opt for a junior event in Malaysia which could help him make the main draw of Australian Open.
Punna Vishal would have wanted to put up a better display to take him into the last four. After wrapping up the first set without much trouble, he allowed things to drift in the second.
Up a break, the Indian allowed Lalji to come back into the match with a sequence of unforced errors. That the Briton was himself going through the motions and already had his mind on next week's qualifiers did not help matters.
"I was just trying to keep the ball in play ... but in the second set I missed lot of balls, he did not score any winner," said Vishal after the match.
Finally, after saving five set points, Vishal managed to pull it off and become the only Indian to enter the semifinals.
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