Bengaluru Open: Nagal makes a strong start

Home favourite and top singles player Sumit Nagal made a dominating start to his Bengaluru Open 2024 campaign with a comfortable straight-set win over France’s Geoffrey Blancaneax at the Karnataka State Lawn Tennis Association Stadium here on Tuesday. The 26-year-old Nagal, who broke in the world top-100 with a title triumph in Chennai last week, was clinical in his service games and exploited his opponent’s second serves to win the singles opening round clash 6-2, 6-2. The Indian star, seeded second here, earned a total of eight breakpoints in the opening set and converted two of them before pocketing the set with a comfortable hold in the eighth game. With the momentum in his favour, Nagal broke Blancaneaux in the very first game of the second set to set the tone. His serve came under pressure for the first time in the fourth game of the second set but Nagal saved three break points to ultimately take a 3-1 lead and then sailed to victory in an hour and 28 minutes. Nagal will now take on Hong Kong’s Coleman Wong, who defeated Rafael Collignon of Belgium 6-4, 7-6(4) in the prestigious tournament being organised by Karnataka State Lawn Tennis Association. In the day’s other matches, former World No.25 Canada’s Vasek Pospisil survived a scare in the opening round while Australian former Top-20 ranked Bernard Tomic failed to advance despite a strong start in his first-round clash against Tristan Boyer of USA. Pospisil, who has been given a wildcard in the competition, got the better of qualifier Eric Vanshelboim of Ukraine 7-6 (2), 3-6, 6-4 in two hours 38 minutes while the 31-year-old Tomic, who came through qualifying, went down 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 against an opponent nine years younger than him. In the doubles category, India’s wild card entrants Sai Karteek Reddy Ganta and Manish Sureshkumar went down 2-6, 6-7 (8) against the French combination of Constantin Kouzmine and Maxime Janvier in the ATP Chall