Yuta Shimizu played energetic strokes with admirable accuracy to beat the top seed and former world No. 42 Benjamin Bonzi 7-5, 6-4 in the pre-quarterfinals of the Dafa News $82,000 Delhi Open Challenger tennis at the DLTA Complex on Wednesday.
Bonzi was erratic, and thus every time he tried to fight back by breaking Shimizu’s serve, he was unable to capitalise on the opening. He did fight bravely, saving match points, but it only stretched the contest a little more.
In comparison, the short-built Shimizu pounced on the chances that came his way, and converted six of seven break points to make it a straight forward affair.
In the quarterfinals the 24-year-old Shimizu, ranked 235, will take on Enrico Dalla Valle of Italy.
There was a further blow to the event, as the Pune Challenger champion and the third seed, Valentin Vacherot of Monaco gave a walkover to Coleman Wong of Hong Kong. Vacherot had been drained of energy in a long-drawn first round against qualifier Jonas Forejtek of the Czech Republic.
The Indian challenge in doubles was sustained by the second seeds, Arjun Kadhe and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan, who beat the Koreans Seongchan Hong and Soonwoo Kwon in straight sets.
The champions of the first two Challengers in Chennai and Bengaluru, top seeded Saketh Myneni and Ramkumar Ramanathan were not at their best and were beaten in straight sets by Jakob Schnaitter and Mark Wallner of Germany.
The Germans will face another Indian pair of Nitin Kumar Sinha and Manish Sureshkumar in the quarterfinals.
However, there was no such luck for Rithvik Bollipalli and Niki Poonacha as they went down 9-11 in the super tie-break against another alternate team, Rifki Fitriadi and Ryuki Matsuda.
The results (pre-quarterfinals): Singles: Yuta Shimizu (Jpn) bt Benjamin Bonzi (Fra) 7-5, 6-4; Enrico Dalla Valle (Ita) bt Federico Gaio (Ita) 7-6(5), 6-1; Coleman Wong (Hkg) w/o Valentin Vacherot (Mon); Tristan Schoolkate (Aus) bt Goncalo Oliveira (Por) 6-3, 7-6(4).
Doubles: Jakob Schnaitter & Mark Wallner (Ger) bt Saketh Myneni & Ramkumar Ramanathan 6-4, 6-4; M Rifki Fitriadi (Ina) & Ryuki Matsuda (Jpn) bt Rithvik Bollipalli & Niki Poonacha 7-6(5), 4-6, [11-9]; Piotr Matuszewski (Pol) & Matthew Romios (Aus) w/o Enrico Dalla Valle (Ita) & Goncalo Oliveira (Por); Arjun Kadhe & Jeevan Nedunchzhiyan bt Seongchan Hong & Soonwoo Kwon (Kor) 7-6(5), 6-3.
