National player Amresh Jayawickrema defeated Aritha Weerasinghe 6-3, 6-0 in one of many Junior National Tennis Championship matches played out at the Sri Lanka Tennis Association (SLTA) courts yesterday.
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National player, Amresh Jayawickrema in action yesterday (Pic by Ranjith Perera) |
Jayawickrema proved just too strong for the lesser seeded Weerasinghe, out running, out hitting and out serving him. After being ground down in the opening set, Aritha had little left and he piled on the unforced errors as he threw away the final set and the match.
In the girl’s under 18 singles, another national player, Amritha Muttiah comprehensively dismantled Thasurika Suriyam 6-0, 6-0.
The day saw two upsets as 16th seed, Dhanya Madugalle, beat eighth seed Sherene Wijesinghe 6-4, 4-6, 6-1, while in the second round 12th seed Shenalie Weerasekera beat 5th seed Vinuri Wickremaratne 6-3, 6-3.
In one of the day’s opening matches, Naadir Nazar took on Sebestian Sansoni, in the Boys under 12 singles second round, in a very straightforward encounter. The seventh seeded Nazar proved to be too strong and wrapped things up 6-2,6-3.
This seemed to be the pattern throughout the first half of the day as all the ensuing matches wound up in straight sets. In the other boys under 12 singles second round matches, Joshua Jayaratne beat Nuwantha Dissanayake 6-2, 6-2, Jerique Rajapakse beat Murad Wafa 6-1, 6-3 and Viranka Fernando overcame Srinath Udayachandran 6-2, 6-0.
In the sole girl’s under 12 singles match of the morning, third seeded Rukshana Abdeen destroyed Asalya Bandara 6-1, 6-0 in a second round match to make it to the semifinal round.
In the boys under 16 singles first round, eighth seed Hussair Shabir predictably brushed aside Eroo Samarasinghe again in straight sets. Samarasinghe could not match the superior play and powerful ground strokes of Shabir and went down 6-2, 6-0.
Shabir will now meet the 16 seeded Sandesh Mendis who, after a slight struggle in the opening set, gathered steam and rolled past Suren Balachandran 6-3, 6-2. In another first round boys under 16 singles clash, Sanjiv Mohankumar dusted off the challenge of Naveen Goonawardena with a scoreline 6-1, 6-2.
Meanwhile in the second round of the under 16 boys singles, Rahul Jordashe was whitewashed by the much stronger fourth seed, Thaaqib Nazar, in straight sets, 6-0, 6-0 |