Day Three at the Aircel Chennai Open was a day to forget for the defending champions.

By Bhagya L Ayyavoo

After the top seed at the Aircel Chennai Open tournament got booted out by a lowly ranked player, second-seed and last year’s winner Marin Cilic survived a huge scare to scrape into the quarter-final. The world No.14 Croat struggled from the first point in a roller-coaster second-round battle against Spaniard Marcel Granollers that lasted for two hours and 46 minutes.

The 21-year-old spilled 29 unforced errors and managed only 21 winners. Cilic struggled to convert over a dozen opportunities as Granollers refused to give in. The players managed to hold their serves, despite a handful of suspicious line calls. The Spaniard finally clinched the first set in the tie-breaker 7-3. 

The second set followed a similar pattern. At one end Cilic gradually got his rhythm, but the pumped up Spaniard continued to hang in and wait for the opportunities. When the chances came in, he promptly converted to go 2-1 up. Soon, Cilic won three games in-a-row to take a 4-3 lead. He broke Granollers again in the 9th game to wrap up Set Two, 6-3.

The defending champ started well in the third set breaking the Spaniard in the very first game of the decider. However, more errors from Cilic’s racquet helped Granollers to make it three-all very quickly. The pendulum soon swung the other way as the Croat maintained his clean record against the 23-year-old Spaniard taking the decider, 6-4. Cilic now leads the head-to-head 4-0. 

In other second-round matches, Thiemo De Bakker of the Netherlands defeated countryman Robin Hasse, 6-3, 6-4. Columbian Santiago Giraldo didn’t sweat much against Jan Hajek of Czech Republic in his 6-4, 6-2 win. 

In doubles, Swiss duo Stanislas Wawrinka and Yves Allegro bounced back in time to knock out the top-seeded American pair and defending champions, Eric Butorac and Rajeev Ram, 3-6, 6-4, 10-5.

World No.38 and Serbia’s No.2 player Janko Tipsarevic proved his class and style against Somdev Devvarman in the second-round clash to end the Indian campaign in singles. 

Wild card entrant Somdev and the fourth-seeded Tipsarevic involved in long tiring rallies and had difficulties holding their service games in the first set. The first five games of the first set were all broken. The first four games alone took 20 minutes of match time in a second-round clash that lasted for only one hour and 18 minutes. At 2-2, Tipsarevic broke the Indian for the third time to go up 3-2. And from thereon, Tipsy won another three games in-a-row to clinch the set 6-2. Somdev failed to hang on to a single service game due to the Serbian’s supremacy.

The Serb’s dominance continued in the second set as he made Somdev run from end to end. However, the second set was far easier than the first for him. The North-east sensation finally managed to win a service game at the start of the second set to lead 1-0. And that was all he could do against the in-form fourth seed. Tipsarevic won six straight games to seal the second set 6-1 as well as the match. Overall, Somdev converted two of his three break-point opportunities while Tipsarevic took advantage of seven of the 10 chances he had.

In doubles, the dream pairing of Carlos Moya and Yuki Bhambri tasted success on debut. The Indo-Spanish wild card duo beat Robby Ginepri of USA and Dudi Sela of Israel, 6-2, 4-6, 10-5 in the opener. Elsewhere, Colin Fleming and Ken Skupski of Great Britain went past Jan Hajek of Czech Republic and Lukas Lacko of Slovakia, 6-4, 6-4. However, the opening-round match between third-seeded duo of Mahesh Bhupathi-Rohan Bopanna and James Cerretani and Travis Rettenmaier of USA was suspended due to rain. The Indians lead the Americans by a set and were tied 5-5 in the second.