Coleman Wong proved a hard nut to crack for S. Mukund as the 17-year-old from Hong Kong converted a second match point for a 6-4, 4-6, 7-5 victory in the first round of the Dafa News $82,000 Delhi Open Challenger tennis tournament at the DLTA Complex on Monday.
After having given a walkover in the quarterfinals on Friday in the Pune Challenger owing to food poisoning, Mukund had recovered to compete hard even though the changed conditions hampered his game.
From not having faced a single break point in two matches in the last Challenger, Mukund was finding it hard to play fluently, especially in the super slow conditions of the centre court.
The 237th-ranked Wong played an intense athletic game, finding solutions to all the queries that Mukund posed, to possibly give himself a chance to face the champion of the last Challenger Valentin Vacherot in the pre-quarterfinals.
Earlier, another wild card entrant Karan Singh played well to win the first set, but was unable to cope with the ferocious fight back by Federico Gaio of Italy and faded away.
The silver lining was the way National champion Siddharth Vishwakarma asserted his high-quality game to earn a berth in the main draw, beating Dan Added of France 7-6(4), 4-6, 7-6(3).
Siddharth was rewarded for his fine game with a first round against another qualifier Samuel Ruggeri of Italy.
The results: Singles (first round): Yuta Shimizu (Jpn) bt Maxime Janvier (Fra) 6-3, 6-1; Federico Gaio (Ita) bt Karan Singh 3-6, 6-3, 6-4; Goncalo Oliveira (Por) bt Yu Hsiou Hsu (Tpe) 6-3, 2-6, 6-4; Coleman Wong (Hkg) bt S Mukund 6-4, 4-6, 7-5.
