Pune, March 3 (IANS) Australia’s Max Purcell, Italian Luca Nardi, Serbian Miljan Zecik, Czech Republic’s Qualifier Dominik Palan reached the Men’s singles semifinals at the Pune Metropolitan Region (PMR) Open ATP challenger Men’s 100 tennis championships at the Shri Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex, here on Friday.
Indian pair of N Vijay Sundar Prashanth and Aniruddh Chandrashekar kept the country’s hopes alive reaching their second finals in a row in the doubles event.
The 24-year old Australian Purcell kept his dream run on the Indian swing of the ATP challengers going as he stormed into his third straight semi-final in as many weeks with a 6-0,6-2 annihilation of the No. 5 seed Francesco Maestrellli of Italy in 56 minutes.
He will now meet Miljan Zekic of Serbia, who outclassed France’s Harold Mayot 6-2, 6-4 to make the last four of the tournament organised by the Maharashtra State Lawn Tennis Association (MSLTA).
In one of the biggest upsets of the day, qualifier Dominik Palan kept up his splendid run in the event as outlasted the second seeded Taiwanese player Hsin Tseng with an impressive 7-6(7-4),1-6,6-3 win in 2 hours and 18 minutes.
Palan, who made it to his first ever semifinals at this level will now take on the No. 4 seed Luca Nardi of Italy, who romped through into the semi-finals with a 6-3,6-0’straight-set win over Rio Noguchi of Japan in 1 hour and 11 minutes.
The duo of Anirudh Chandrasekar and Vijay Sundar Prashanth kept the Indian interest alive reaching their second final in a row. The Indian pair, who finished runners up in Bengaluru last week will look to go for the title as they take on Japanese pair of Toshide Matsui and Kaito Uesugi in the finals
In the semis, Anirudh Chandrasekar and Vijay Sundar Prashanth led 4-0 as Pune boy Arjun Kadhe and his Austrian Partner Maximilian Neuchrist retired with the Austrian citing fever.
In the other semifinals fifth seeded Japanese pair of Toshide Matsui and Kaito Uesugi registered a 6-2, 7-5 win over the Indian pair of Mukund Sasikumar and Vishnu Vardhan.
–IANS
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