Divij-Raja bow out of Mexico ATP Challenger

San Luis Potosi: Divij Sharan and Purav Raja fought valiantly before losing to Marco Chiudinelli of Switzerland and Peter Gojowczyk of Germany in the semi-finals of the ATP Challenger event, here.

The Indians lost the last-four stage match of the clay court tournament 6-7(3) 7-6(7) 11-13 in little over two hours. The two pairs broke each other twice in the first set to push the issue to a tie breaker in which the Swiss-German team prevailed. The Indians clawed their way back in the match by winning the second set which was also stretched to a tie-breaker as the two pairs held their serves throughout. Divij and Raja were trailing 3-6 at one stage but went on to win 9-7 to force a match tie-breaker. The Indians yet again put up a good fight but lost the closely fought match tie-break. Divij and Raja won a total of 84 points to 92 of their opponents. PTI