Asiad: Somdev serves up India’s historic singles gold in tennis

On Monday,Somdev had paired with Sanam Singh to win the gold medal in the men’s doubles event in Guangzhou.

He and Singh combined superbly to win the first gold medal for India in the tennis event in this edition of the Games as the sixth seed pair shocked second seed Chinese Gong Maoxin and Li Zhe 6-3 6-7(4) 10-8 in the final.

Monday was also an extremely fruitful day for Somdev as he inched closer to a historic singles gold after pipping Japan’s Tatasuma Ito 6-2 0-6 6-3 in the semifinals to set up the summit-clash with top seed Denis Istomin.

Somdev had also won the gold in the men’s singles event at the recently concluded Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

Somdev and Sanam’s gold medal feat assumes significance as India landed here without star doubles pair of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi,gold medallists of the last edition at Doha in 2006,who opted to play in the World Tour Finals in London.

Rohan Bopanna is also missing from the Indian line-up though he had failed to qualify for the World Tour Finals.

No Indian player had played in the gold-medal match in the men’s singles before Somdev,world number 106,and the country had three bronze medals to show so far at the Games.

Leander Paes (Hiroshima in 1994),Mahesh Bhupathi (Bangkok in 1998) and Prahlad Srinath (Bangkok in 1998) had won those three bronze medal in men’s singles.

In total,Somdev won three medals at this edition of the Games as he had earlier won a bronze in the team event as well.

India rounded off its tennis campaign with five medals,two more than what the country had got at the Doha Asian Games in 2006.

At Doha,Leander Paes had won two gold medals — in men’s doubles with Mahesh Bhupathi and in mixed doubles with Sania Mirza.

Sania had won a sliver in the women’s singles. The final match between Somdev and Istomin never rose to expected heights as the Uzbek was erratic and failed to curb his unforced errors,which helped Somdev’s cause.

The Indian broke the Uzbek twice in the opening set to take a comfortable 5-0 and served it out in the seventh game,having dropped his own in the sixth.

The second set was no different as Somdev again rode on double break after initial resistance from Istomin to seal the gold medal.