Pune:
Rutuja Bhosale and Karman Kaur Thandi picked up two of the eight qualifying spots with hard-fought wins in the qualifying rounds of the NECC-ITF women’s USD 25,000 tennis tournament at the Deccan Gymkhana, here today.
The 16th seeded Rutuja, who came here on two-week break from her college in the United States, was stretched a bit by Georgian Oksana Kalashnikova before the Indian prevailed in straight sets.
After being forced to win the first set via tie-break, Pune girl Rutuja took control of her serves and returned well to upset Oksana’s rhythm.
Rutuja won the tie-break 7-3 and then wrapped up the match by winning the second set to complete a 7-6 6-4 win.
Unseeded Karman Kaur Thandi then shocked 14th seed Shweta Rana 6-3 6-3, while Rishika Sunkara, failed to make the grade, after being beaten by qualifying round top seed Miki Miyamura of Japan 4-6 7-6 (7-2) 5-7.
Others who made it to the main draw were Silvia Njiric of Croatia, Magdalena Frech and Katarzyna Kawa, both from Poland, Buayam Kamonwan of Thailand and Cristina Ene of Romania.
Anastasiya Vasylyeva of Ukraine landed in Pune to boost the quality of the field and get the top seeding for her world ranking of 17. Anastasiya had entered in both the last week’s USD 25,000 event in Navi Mumbai and this event. She had withdrawn from the Navi Mumbai event as she could not fly out from her country as the war-torn city’s Kharkiv airport had been shut for a while.
There was no communication from her side, but Anastasiya decided to take a long train journey from Kharkiv to Kiev and fly out from there to Mumbai.
Anastasiya is followed in the seedings list by Cindy Burger of the Netherlands. India’s Ankita Raina is ranked fourth behind third seed Sofia Shapatava of Georgia.
Final qualifying round results: 2-Silvia Njiric (Cro) bt Diana Bogoliy (Ukr) 6-3 7-6 (7-2); Karman Kaur Thandi (Ind) bt 14-Shweta Rana (Ind) 6-3 6-3; 7-Magdalena Frech (Pol) bt Bhuvana Kalva (Ind) 6-2 6-2; 9-Katarzyna Kawa (Pol) bt 8-Barbara Bonic (Srb) 6-4 6-4; 16-Rutuja Bhosale (Ind) bt 5-Oksana Kalashnikova (Geo) 7-6 (7-3) 6-4; Buayam Kamonwan (Tha) bt 3-Ching-Wen Hsu (Tpe) 6-4 6-4; 1-Miki Miyamura (Jpn) bt 11-Rishika Sunkara (Ind) 6-4 6-7 (2-7) 7-5; 12-Cristina Ene (Rou) bt 6-Chloe Paquet (Fra) 5-7 6-3 6-3.
