Bopanna goes down fighting to top seed Lu in Tashkent Challenger

Tashkent, Oct 16 (UNI) India's Rohan Bopanna put up a brave fight before losing his second round match to top seed Yen-Hsun Lu of Chinese Taipei to crash out of the USD 1,25,000 Tashkent Challenger here.

The Indian went down 6-3, 5-7, 0-6 in the 1 hr 40 min tussle.

Bopanna, who qualified for the main draw, started off well, breaking Lu in the eighth game to go 5-3 up. The tall Coorgi served two brilliant aces to close the first set at 6-3.

In a closely contested second set, both players held serves till 3-3. In the seventh game Bopanna had four break points and an opportunity to go 4-3 up but failed to convert any of them and let Lu hold on to his serve and go 3-4 up instead.

In the 10th game, Bopanna saved three set points and held his serve to level the scores at 5-5. Lu brought out all his experience playing brilliant baseline tennis using a mix of top spin and backhand slices to force Bopanna into making unforced errors in the 12th game to break him and win the second set 7-5 and level the set scores.

In the third set, Bopanna looked disoriented missing out on his first serve percentage, which let Lu get back into the match rather easily.

Lu Broke Bopanna in the 2nd, 4th and the 6th games to close the match 6-0.

In other matches, unseeded 192nd ranked Frenchman Mathieu Montcourt upset eighth seeded Japanese Go Soeda 6-3, 6-2 in a one sided encounter.

UNI XC AB CS2050