Chennai Open: Nagal through to final, one win away from Top 100 debut

Sumit Nagal survived a late injury scare to book his place in the final of the Chennai Open, an ATP Challenger Tour event, on Saturday with a 6-3, 6-4 win over Dalibor Svrcina.

In his eighth Challenger final, Nagal takes on 20-year-old Luca Nardi, the top-seeded Italian. The winner of Sunday’s summit clash is guaranteed to make his Top 100 debut in the ATP Rankings.

Nagal, up by a double break, failed to serve for the match for the first time at 5-2 in the second set as his forehand started misfiring. The 26-year-old then took a medical timeout to receive some treatment for the pain in his right shoulder.

Nagal tried to close the tie for the second time and at 30-all, hit a forehand down the line which the linesman ruled ‘out’ before the chair umpire reversed the call. From a chance to break Nagal again and bringing things back on serve, Svrcina now faced a match point. The 21-year-old Czech netted a forehand return early in the next rally and threw his cap away in frustration, ending the semifinal which fell five minutes short of the two-hour mark.

Svrcina had less than 24 hours to recover from a gruelling two hours 55 minutes long three-set quarterfinal against Mukund Sasikumar.

Still, the third seed opted to stick to his playing style. He tried to make it a baseline slugfest against Nagal with occasional drop shots to mix things up in the sweltering heat at the SDAT Stadium here. The duo engaged in a 23-shot rally on the second point of the match itself.

Also read | Dalibor Svrcina, fighter with a racket and deep into Hinduism and Buddhism books, marks his tennis territory

In a closely contested first set, it was Nagal’s performance on the second serve which made the difference. The Indian won five out of nine second serve points and all five second serve return points. For Svrcina, the respective stats were four and zero.

Nagal broke Svrcina in the third and fifth game of the second set to take a 5-1 lead. He also showed great consistency in using the serve out wide to the Czech’s forehand to get out of trouble on multiple occasions.

In the all-Indian doubles final, Asian Games silver medallists Saketh Myneni and Ramkumar Ramanathan defeated Rithvik Bollipalli and Niki Poonacha to clinch the title.