Sheethal beats top ranked Rushmi to reach national grasscourt final

Kolkata: Fourth seed Karnataka`s Sheethal Goutham ousted top seed Rushmi Chakravarthi 6-3, 1-6, 6-3 after a 110-minute battle to reach the women`s final of the Vishwarupa Tubes National Grasscourt Tennis Championship.

In the first set Goutham got broken in the very first game but went on to break back in the fourth and followed it up by breaking Rushmi in the sixth to take the set 6-3. Rushmi pulled her game up in the next set and broke Goutham in the second and sixth to equalize. The final set went with serves and there was a solitary break by Sheethal in the eighth game. In men`s singles semi finals, qualifier Ashutosh Singh defeated second seed N.Vijay Sundar Prashanth in 170 minutes, 5-7, 7-5, 6-2 after one of the best matches of the Championship. The first set saw a lone break in the eleventh game when Ashutosh failed to keep his serve and Prashanth took the set 7-5. Ashutosh broke Prashanth in the eighth game but Prashanth broke back in the ninth.Again Ashutosh broke Prashanth in the twelfth and equalized the match. Singh served 3 aces to Prashanth`s one. In the third set Ashutosh pulled his game up by a few notches and broke Prashanth in the 4th and 8th games to book a berth in the finals. The other finals was a relatively tame affair with P.C.Vignesh beating Vivek Shokeen 6-4,6-4 in 85 minutes. Shivika Burman lost her singles semi finals to Gujarat`s Ankita Raina 6-3,206,5-7 in 125 minutes. Coming back from behind Ankita played some intelligent tennis coupled with unforced errors from Shivika.Shivika, however, reached the finals of the Women`s Doubles in company of Treta Bhattacharyya. Shivika and Treta played safe tennis to clinch the match 4-6,7-5,10-7. IANS