US Open: Bhambri advances to second round of qualifiers; Ramanathan, Nagal crash out

Yuki Bhambri in action. Pic/ PTI

Indian tennis player Yuki Bhambri advanced to the second round of the U.S Open 2022 men's singles qualifiers after a hard-fought win over Moldovas Radu Albot, here.

Bhambri, 552 in the ATP rankings, beat world No. 107 Radu Albot 7-6(4), 6-4 in one hour and 34 minutes on the hard courts of USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on Wednesday night.

In the first set, Yuki got off to a slow start and was broken in his first service by Radu Albot. The Indian tennis player immediately returned the favour and then built on the momentum to go 5-2 up in the seventh game.

However, the former junior Australian Open champion, with a higher number of unforced errors and doubles faults, allowed his opponent a way back into the set which stretched into the tiebreaker.

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The Indian won the first five points in the tiebreaker and then thwarted a late comeback to take the first set. The unforced errors kept flowing from Bhambri's racket in the second set but with decent net play and better breakpoint conversions, he won the second set to qualify for the next round, an olympics.com report said.

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The 30-year-old Bhambri will take on world No. 155 Zizou Bergs of Belgium in the second qualifying round of the Grand Slam event on Thursday. There are a total of three qualifying rounds in the men's singles before the main draw action gets underway at the U'S Open 2022.

Meanwhile, India's highest-ranked men's singles player Ramkumar Ramanathan, and Sumit Nagal could not cross the first hurdle and crashed out of the U.S Open men's singles.

Ramkumar, 241 in ATP rankings, lost to 18-year-old American Bruno Kuzuhara 3-6, 5-7 in one hour and 28 minutes. On the other hand, Sumit, ranked 464, was beaten by world No 132 Vasek Pospisil of Canada 6-7(2), 4-6 to make an early exit.

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