Sunil Kumar wins ITF doubles crown

Sunil Kumar Sipaeya and Raian Luchici of Romania won the doubles title at the ITF Grade-4 International Hardcourt championships at Windsor, New Jersey.

The duo, as top seeds, defeated the unseeded American pair of Kevin Borzenski and Nathaniel Emge 6-2, 6-2 in the final. Incidently, Borzenski and Emge had upset the second seeded Indian pair of Amanjot Singh and Saurabh Singh in the quarter-finals 5-7, 6-4, 6-4.

Earlier, Sunil and Luchici had beaten Jarret Chrico and Wayne Odesnik of USA 7-5, 6-3 in the semi-finals and two other Amercian pairs, William Bo-Wiegaard and Darrin Cohen 6-1, 6-3 in the quarter-finals and Frank Green / Josh Raff in the second round. They had a first round bye.

The title gives Sunil 30 points, but it won't improve his doubles ranking as his sixth best result is already 30 points.

In the singles, the second seeded Sunil Kumar went down in the pre-quarter-final to unseeded Jarrett Chirico of the United States 0-6, 0-6.

Both the other Indians lost in the second round; Amanjot Singh lost to Eric Langenkamp of the United States 3-6, 6-4, 5-7, while Saurabh Singh went down to Marvin Rolle of Bahama 5-7, 1-6.

Seventh seed Stephen Amritraj of the United States was also upset 4-6, 4-6 by Chris Brown of the United States in the second round.

Meanwhile, Tushar Gautam went down in the first round of the $15,000 futures in Nigeria.

Gautam, who had qualified into the main draw lost to wildcard Gabriel Otu of Nigeria 4-6, 5-7.

Earlier, the Indian had defeated Samuel Fumi of Ghana 7-6(1), 1-6, 7-6(3) to qualify for the main draw.

Another Indian Kaushik Sridhar lost in the first round of the qualifier to Musa Braimoh of Nigeria 1-6, 1-6.

In the doubles qualifier, second seeds Tushaar Gautam and Atsufumi Yoshikawa of Japan lost to the Nigerian pair of Kyrian Nwokedi and Kabiru Ibrahim 6-7(5), 6-2, 3-6 in the first round.