NEW DELHI, May 29: The red clay courts at the DLTA may not be a patch on the impeccable Roland Garros, but the beauty of positive tennis is a treat to watch, anywhere.

On a southpaws' day, Chandigarh's Sunil Kumar, playing a near perfect game of backcourt aggression, shook off a strong bid by West Bengal's Vinod Sewa 5-7, 6-1, 6-2 to reach the boys under-14 final of the Adidas Masters Junior Tennis here on Thursday.

Sunil meets Maharashtra's Pratim Parikh in the final. In a match that was over long before it started, Pratim knocked out an off-colour Anant Sitaram -- the second seed.

The girls' semifinals offered the staple diet of baseline rallies with hesitant forays to the net. Down one set, Megha Vakharia -- another `lefty' -- started attacking Yamini's backhand and breezed through the next two sets 6-1, 6-1 to reach the girls under-14 final. She now meets Gujrat's Nikita Bharadwaj, who survived a tie-break against Lisa Pereira before squeaking through 4-6,7-6 (7-3), 6-3.

In the girls under-16 semi-finals, Gujarat's Karishma Patel showed the door to the second seeded Shruti Dhawan, while top seeded Radhika Tulpule of Maharashtra had a cool afternoon disposing off statemate Sonia Shelar 6-3, 6-1.

Results (all semifinals): Boys u-14: Sunil Kumar (Chd) bt Vinod Sewa (WB) 5-7, 6-1, 6-2, Pratim Parekh (Mah) bt Anant Sitaram (AP) 6-1, 6-0.

Boys under 16: Ravikiran Bhat (Kar) bt Kamala Kannan (TN) 6-2, 6-3, Manoj Mahadevan (TN) bt Arjun Shetty 6-2, 6-4.

Girls u-14: Nikita Bharadwaj (Guj) bt Lisa Pereira (Mah) 4-6,7-6 (7-3), 6-3, Megha Vakharia (Mah) bt T. Yamini (TN) 3-6, 6-1, 6-1. Girls u-16: Radhika Tulpule (Mah) bt Sonia Shelar (Mah) 6-3, 6-1. Karishma Patel (Guj) bt Shruti Dhawan (Chd) 6-4, 6-0.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.