Sipaeya,Rastrogi sail into ITF Futures quarter-finals

Dehradun, May 31 (UNI) Sixth seed India's Sunil Kumar Sipaeya fought off a spirited challenge from his Japanese opponent to move into the quarter-finals of 15,000 dollar ITF Mens Futures Tennis Tournament here today.

Sipaeya scrapped past Yaoki Ishii 6-4, 6-7(4), 7-5 in a three-hour-long marathon pre-quarterfinal match.

Sipaeya clinched the first set by breaking the rival in the fifth game with an ace. Second set saw a series of point breaks by both the players extending the set to a tie, which Ishii won to level the match 1-1. In the decider too, the Japanese, after trailing 4-1, made a come back and made it 5-5.

But, Sepaeya regained his touch and made it 6-5 with a brilliant ace. Maintaining the tempo, the indian subsequently edged out his rival by packing the final set 7-5. In the whole match, Sipaeya hit nine aces and committed three double faults whereas Ishii had four aces and six double faults.

Sipaeya will face in the quarter-final Alexy Kedriouk (Kaz) who downed Mustafa Ghouse of India 7-5, 6-4.

Results: Singles pre-Q/F: Aqueel Khan(Pak) bt Vishal Uppal (Ind) 6-3, 6-2 Vivek Shoken (Ind) bt Sumit Prakash Gupta (Ind) 6-4, 6-2 Nick Monroe (GBR) bt Aditya Madkekar (Ind) 6-4, 6-1 Vinod Sridhar (Ind) bt Purav Raja (Ind) 6-2, 6-3 Karan Rastogi (Ind) bt Nitin Kirtane (Ind) 4-6, 6-0, 6-0 Henry Ajei-Darko (Gha) bt Vijay Paul (USA) 6-2, 6-4 Doubles Q/F: Vishal Punnan/J Vishnu Vardhan bt Sumit Prakash Gupta/Vivek Shokeen 2-6, 7-6(5), 6-4 Vinod Sridhar/Vishal Uppal bt Sandeep Kirtane/Varun Walia 6-3, 6-1 Aditya Madkekar/Purav Raja bt Tushar Liberhan/Navdeep Singh 7-5, 6-1 UNI XC PDS RK1856