Pune,
\nMaking a stupendous start to the new season, Ramkumar Ramanathan stunned higher-ranked Roberto Carballes Baena to set up a second-round clash with world No. 6 Marin Cilic in the Tata Open here today.<\/p>\n
The 148th-ranked Ramkumar prevailed 7-6(4) 6-2 over Baena, placed 42 places above him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a lot of respect for him, I am going to give my best. I want to present a good fight before the home crowd,\u201d said Ramkumar.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever happens, happens. What you can expect from me is a good fight from the first point to the last.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked about his latest strategy to try more serve and volley, he said: \u201cI felt comfortable coming up to the net. I did whatever I could. Last year, I was doing a lot of serve and volley. The courts here are fast, so why not. I am going to stick to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frenchman Gilles Simon started the new season with a straight-set victory over Tennys Sandgren.<\/p>\n
The 12-time winner on the ATP Tour, who is aiming to regain his form after a difficult last season, beat the American 6-4 6-1 to advance to the second round. The 33-year-old, who dropped from world No. 25 to 89 over the course of last year, will next face third-seeded Spaniard Roberto Bautista Agut.<\/p>\n
Qualifier Ricardo Ojeda Lara produced the first big shock of the tournament, beating sixth seed Jiri Vesely in the first round. The 24-year-old Spaniard, who came into the main draw after winning two matches, looked like the man in form as he won 6-3 7-6.<\/p>\n
Seventh seed Mikhail Kukushkin beat Moldova\u2019s Radu Albot 6-2 7-6, while eighth seed Pierre-Hugues Herbert fought past Italy\u2019s Marco Cecchinato 7-6 6-7 6-2.<\/p>\n
Chile\u2019s Nicolas Jarry also advanced to the second round after beating Spain\u2019s Pablo Andujar 6-7 6-4 7-5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pune, Making a stupendous start to the new season, Ramkumar Ramanathan stunned higher-ranked Roberto Carballes Baena to set up a second-round clash with world No. 6 Marin Cilic in the Tata Open here today. The 148th-ranked Ramkumar prevailed 7-6(4) 6-2 over Baena, placed 42 places above him. \u201cI have a lot of respect for him, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16908,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16907"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16909,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16907\/revisions\/16909"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}