India’s Ramkumar Ramanathan thrashed Austrian David Pichler in straight sets in a lop-sided men’s singles final to secure his third ITF title by winning the Kalaburagi Open on Sunday. Ramkumar, who won the ITF Mumbai Open last week, took just 64 minutes to quell Pichler’s challenge 6-2, 6-1 at the Chandrashekhar Patil Stadium to claim his third ITF title in a span of 57 days. Ramkumar, a member of the Indian Davis Cup team, pocketed the winner’s cheque of USD 3200 and 25 precious ATP points, while the visitor was richer by USD 2120 besides gaining 16 ATP points.
“It feels great to win back-to-back titles. My game is coming along good. I did play some of my best tennis in these last two weeks,” said Ramkumar after the victory.
“The courts here didn’t suit my game initially, but I adapted to them very quickly.” Playing in front of home crowd, Ramkumar was already morally boosted even before he hit his first serve.
After both the players held their serve for the first five games, Ramkumar made the first dent by breaking David’s serve in the sixth game and never looked back, dishing out some superb winners to capture the rest of the games to win the set 6-2.
The second set promised a fightback from David when he held his serve losing just a point, but Ramkumar had different plans.
Moving with great tenacity, he forced David to commit mistakes and himself came up with a couple of cross court winners which drew cheers from the crowd that could be heard a mile away.
The only game Ramkumar struggled to hold his serve was in the fifth game where he didn’t find answers to David’s down the line winners. With two breaks in the fourth and sixth game, Ramkumar signed off with an ace to almost blank his opponent at 6-1 to win the crown.
