Ajay Ramaswamy won the battle of Indians when he beat Vijay Kannan to enter the final of ITF Satellite Masters tennis tournament in New Delhi on Thursday.
Ramaswamy will now challenge third seed Konstantin Gruber of Austria, who upset the top seed Simon Greul of Germany 6-1, 6-2, in the final.
The doubles title went to Mustafa Ghouse and Vishal Uppal who beat Greul and Peter Mayer-Tischer 6-3, 6-4.
Ramaswamy, who hogged limelight after his surprise wins in the last three rounds, played a relaxed game to win the semifinal 6-1, 7-6 (12/10).
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The Mumbai player, who had won only two first round matches in the first and third leg, raised his standard this week as he won hard fought matches, including the scalp of fourth seed Norikazu Sugiayma.
Ramaswamy broke Kannan in the seventh and ninth games to take control of the first after the scores were level at 3-3. Kannan then served a double fault to give set point to the ONGC player, which he accepted with a fine backhand shot.
Though Kannan tried to stage a fightback in the second set he failed to produce his best game.
On the other hand, 664 ranked Ramaswamy, tightened his game to win crucial points but the second set still went to the wire.
Ramaswamy missed an easy lob before bagging two straight points to lead 5-3 in the tie-breaker but Kannan fought back and the equal exchange went till 10-10 before Ramaswamy found the crucial mini-break.
In the other semifinal, Gruber trounced the top seed in just 45 minutes. Greul had won all the three singles finals in the earlier legs held at Gurgaon.
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