Mumbai: Delhi Dreams took a commanding 2-1 lead over Mumbai Tennis Masters in the best-of-five tie between the two teams in the Champions Tennis League encounter at the Kalina University Sports Complex here on Sunday.
Delhi, who went into the game with two wins and a loss under their belt, were given a 1-0 lead by Juan Carlos Ferrero when he defeated Mumbai’s Sergi Bruguera 6-3.
This was neutralised by the home team’s Tommy Robredo and Alize Cornet with a come-from-behind 6-4 victory over Delhi’s Sanam Singh and Jelena Jankovich.
In the third women’s singles rubber, Jelena Jankovic of Serbia defeated her French rival Alize Cornet 5-4 in the tie break after the game scores were level at 5-all to provide Delhi with a 2-1 advantage in the number of matches.
Ferrero faced his senior Spanish compatriot Bruguera in the opening match of the tie between two former French Open men’s singles champions.
As was expected there were some good rallies from the two Spaniards but the nine-year advantage that Ferrero had in the age factor worked in his favour.
Games went with serves for the first seven games, with 2003 French Open winner and former world no. 1 Ferrero winning two of them at love, before the decisive break came in the eighth game when former world no. 3 Bruegera was broken after deuce was called once.
The 43-year-old Bruguera served a costly double fault to stare defeat at 15-40, saved one match point after a lengthy and thrilling rally with a superb forehand winner but was broken when his forehand found the tramlines that helped his 34-year-old rival take a 5-3 lead.
Bruguera refused to give up and was up 30-0 on his rival’s serve with some hustling at the net. But that was the last piece of resistance as Ferrero took the next three points to be on match point and then clinched the tie with a forehand smash off an attempted lob from his senior rival.
Ferrero had won the previous encounter between the two Spanish legends in Delhi’s home game with a 6-2 score-line which set up his team’s 4-1 rout of Mumbai in their first leg match-up.
However, Mumbai fought back superbly through their Spain-France mixed doubles combination of Tommy Robredo and Alize Cornet who clinched the match 6-4 after storming their way back from 1-4 against Delhi’s Sanam Singh, who played the game instead of the originally scheduled Kevin Anderson, and Serbian Jelena Jankovic.
Robredo and Cornet, whose serve was broken first in the match, reeled off five games in a row to clinch the match and keep Mumbai’s hopes alive.
They broke Jankovic serve in the seventh game to move closer to their rivals (3-4) and then, after leveling at 4-all, broke Sanam’s serve when the Indian netted a half-volley return.
Robredo then used his booming serves to win the 10th game and close out the set and the match.
In the women’s singles clash, the two women held serves till the tie break was resorted to which was clinched by former world number one Jankovic.
While on Saturday match, Hyderabad Aces dealt a big blow to Bangalore Raptors’ chances of advancing to the final of the Champions Tennis League after the visitors registered a 25-22 win in a thrilling group match here.
Bangalore had a chance to win the tie in the deciding rubber, but Hyderabad’s Mikhail Youzhny poured cold water on the hopes of the hosts by defeating Feliciano Lopez in ‘super overtime’ which was forced upon the players as the overall points of the teams were on par.
The winner of the ‘super overtime’ gets bonus points and hence the tie ended with Hyderabad ousting Bangalore 25-22 at the Karnataka State Lawn Tennis Association Stadium on Saturday night.(PTI)