Samrita Sekar shocks Tulpule on way to semis

Eighth seed Samrita Sekar shocked second seed Radhika Tulpule 6-4, 7-5 to enter the semi-finals in the ITF Futures women's tennis tournament at the Shivaji Park Gymkhana in Mumbai on Thursday.

Samrita, playing an attacking game, subdued the Mumbai girl in one hour 12 minutes.

In the first set, Samrita dropped her serve in the second game but came back strongly to break her opponent in very next game. She got a crucial break in the ninth game to win the set 6-4.

In the second set, Tulpule dropped serve in the fifth game but fought back well to break her rival in the sixth game to level the score at 3-all. The Mumbai girl showed her fighting qualities again and broke Samrita in the tenth game after failing to hold her own in the ninth to level the scores at five.

However, Samrita, played some incredible passing shots to break Tulpule in the 11th game and then served out the match at 7-5.

In other quarter-final matches, third seed Sai Jayalakshmi rallied well, after dropping the first set to pip sixth seed Archana Vekatraman 0-6, 6-2, 6-2 in one hour 37 minutes.

Fifth seed Sheetal Goutham took just 53 minutes to beat wild card Krushmi Chhedha 6-4, 6-1 while fourth seed Sonal Phadke needed a minute more to beat seventh seed Liza Pereira 6-3, 6-1 to book the last semi-final berth.

In the semi-finals on Friday, Samrita will play Phadke while Sai will take on Goutham.

Yesterday's report
Easy for seeded players