|
Canada Masters
It was a good week for Mehul/Kroese as the third seeds found their way through tough matches in the last three rounds to defend their title here. The world's #1 team, Gaskell/Trulsen, was the foe in the semifinals. After dropping the first set, it took a tense tiebreak and a good showing in a 10-5 super TB to defeat them. 7-5, 7-5 was the scoreline of a close championship match against 5th-seeded Corovez/Pokdopayev. It was a good example of the tough sledding that they will need to do to reach the pinnacle.
Shyam Senepathy was given a wild-card here, and responded by losing to a qualifier. It was close, but still. Way to not go. Shreya Ujjaval won a tight one over Agustin Herrera, then surprisingly crushed Jolland in the next round. He was up 6-2 over Janin in the third round before the Canadian rallied to beat him. Definitely a good week for our #2. The third round was giant-killing time elsewhere. Fangio dropped out to Phillipe Besson who is making another push, and Prakash Mooljee was stunned by Niklas, 6-3, 6-7(5), 6-4. After three straight years in the final here, he just got outplayed here in a close match.
That left a fairly diluted business end of the tournament. Tomas Niklas kept on going with a tight win over Srbulovic, Luc Janin narrowly beat Besson, and favorites Browne and Kaspar won routinely. The semis went about as you'd expect, with neither underdog taking more than six games. Johnny Browne got off to a poor start in the final, and Mateo Kaspar wins again, 6-0, 6-4. It was notably the best showing for Niklas in almost a year(last SF was at Shanghai at the end of '51) and for the moment, it boosted him back into the Top 10.
|