Melbourne: Prajnesh Gunneswaran advanced to the second round of the Australian Open qualifiers but Ramkumar Ramanathan frittered away a one-set advantage to make an exit, here Tuesday.
Prajnesh knocked out local wild card Harry Bourchier 6-2, 6-4 to set up second round clash with Germany’s Yannick Hanfmann.
Ramkumar led against 15th seed Fernando Coria of Argentina before losing steam to suffer a 6-4, 4-6, 1-6 defeat.
It should be stated here that Prajnesh had last year competed in main draws of all the four Majors of the season.
Prajnesh was always in control of the match against Bourchier. Even though he was broken in the opening game of the match, the Indian quickly turned the set around by breaking his opponent’s serve thrice. In the second set also Prajnesh broke Bourchier once to seal up the match.
Sumit Nagal, who enjoyed a breakthrough 2019 season, will open his campaign in the qualifiers against Egypt’s Mohamed Safwat.
In the women’s qualifiers, India’s lone contender Ankita Raina went down tamely 2-6, 6-7(2-7) against Bulgaria’s Viktoriya Tomova.
PTI