Nelord, Malik advance to 2nd round in ITF tournament

New Delhi: India`s Yannick Nelord and Vijayant Malik advanced to the second round with hard-fought victories on the opening day of USD 15,000 ITF tournament at the DLTA complex.

Nelord got the better of Hsin-Han Lee of Chinese Taipei 6-0, 4-6, 6-3 while compatriot Vijayant Malik downed Vaja Uzakov of Uzbekistan 6-2, 7-6(6) in their first round matches. However, other Indians in the fray -- wildcards Vaidik Munshaw and Saurabh Singh -- crashed out of the tournament after suffering straight set defeats against their respective opponents. Munshaw was shown the door by Chinese Xin-Yuan Yu 2-6, 4-6 while Singh lost to Chinese qualifier Wan Gao 2-6, 5-7.In the first match of the day, Nelord showed good control and consistency in his ground strokes against eight seeded Lee, who relied on his punchy forehand, to romp home in one hour and 36 minutes. Nelord ran down every ball and patiently waited for the short ball to hammer out winners. His steadier serves and ground strokes were a treat to watch for the spectators.He now awaits the winner of the match between Vivek Shokeen and qualifier Liang-Chi Huang of Chinese Taipei. On the other hand, Malik next plays the winner of the match between Sudanwa Sitaram and seventh seed Karan Rastogi. PTI