Semis slot for Sewa

Semis slot for Sewa
UNITED NEWS OF INDIA

CALCUTTA, FEBRUARY 9: City youth Vinod Sewa stormed into the semi-finals of the boys singles event while another local youngster Dhrub Kumar fell by the wayside in the ITF Junior World Ranking Tennis Tournament.

Sewa rode on his outstanding from to crush wildcard entrant Benjamin Xavier 6-2 6-1, lucky loser Dhrub squandered opportunities to succumb to unseeded Kuhar Uros of Slovenia 6-4 7-5.

The only seeded player to enter the boys' singles semi-final was fourth seeded Hazut Sofyan of Armenia, who made short work of 1999 junior National champion Kamala Kannan, beating him 6-1 6-0. Sofyan faces unseeded Rajan Luchici of Romania who carved out an easy victory over P Ravishankar 6-1 6-2.

In the girls' singles, the only unseeded player to enter the semi-finals was Nandita Chandrasekhar who showed the door to third seeded Aibika Kalsareva 6-3 6-1. Top seed Radhika Tulpule withstood of stiff first set resistance before disposing off sixth seeded Nischela Reddy 7-6 (1) 6-1.

Second seeded Shuai Peng of Chinaset up a semi-final clash with compatriot Xie Yan Zo after overcoming fifth seeded Geeta Manohar 6-2 6-3 and unseeded Samrita Sekhar 6-1 6-4 respectively.

Chang, Courier advance:
Fourth seed Michael Chang and fifth seed Jim Courier won their opening-round matches in the Sybase Open in San Jose on Tuesday. Andre Agassi withdrew because of injury.

Results (prefix number denotes seeding)
First round: 4-Michael Chang (US) bt Paradorn Srichaphan (Thailand) 7-5 6-4, 5-Jim Courier (US) bt Eric Taino (US) 6-3 6-4, Magnus Larsson (Sweden) bt Martin Rodriguez (Spain) 6-2 6-1, Xavier Malisse (Belgium) bt Richard Fromberg (Australia) 7-6 (7-5) 0-6 6-4, Paul Goldstein (US) beat James Blake (US) 6-3 7-6 (7-4), Cecil Mamitt (US) bt Julian Alonso (Spain) 6-4 6-4.