“I will also have to pull out of Sydney and I will now fly to Melbourne and see if I can be ready in time for the Australian Open. I feel sorry for the crowd and the tournament. It is a very disappointing moment for me,” Schuettler said in an official statement.

Holding it together

This year’s Chennai Open has seen two high-profile withdrawals — top seed Nikolay Davydenko and now fifth seed Schuettler — and has also witnessed other big draws being subjected to unceremonial exits — second seed Stanislas Wawrinka lost to an unknown qualifier in his first-round match — and though each such incident means India’s biggest tennis event loses a bit of its sheen, the performance of wild card Somdev continues to hold it all together.

“I never want to take credit for a walkover. I was excited about today, and I was looking forward to playing Schuettler. Both of us play from the baseline, and I was thinking of maybe being a bit more aggressive. I was very confident from yesterday’s win and I would’ve preferred to sweat it out rather than making the final this way, but it’s not in my control. That being said, I’ll take it. I’m going to focus on the match tomorrow, and forget about how I got there,” said Somdev, reacting to Schuettler’s withdrawal. “Things have gone my way here this week, but I am confident of doing well.”

Fiendish forehand

The dream goes on, but for it to end on a happy note, Somdev will have to find some way to tackle Cilic and his fiendish forehand. In his match against Marcel Granollers on Saturday, the 20-year-old employed his most outstanding weapon to the best of his ability, and even after a slight stutter in the second set, came through to better last year’s semi-final appearance in Chennai. He won this match 6-4, 6-3, but feels it will be more than just Somdev’s tennis skills he will have to be wary of on Sunday.

... contd.