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Srinath reigns in ITF Satellite

Top seed Prahlad Srinath scored a magnificient 6-4, 6-4 victory over second seed Artem Derepasko of Russia to lift the ITF men's Satellite Tennis Tournament (first leg) in Bangalore today.

Dominating the proceedings from the word go, Srinath outplayed the Russian, who had played for his country in the Davis Cup last year, and won in just 68 minutes.

Srinath made his intentions clear when he broke his opponent in the very first game of the match at love. The big-serving Indian again blanked Derepasco in the second game, scoring with his thundering first serves to go up 2-0.
Derepesko, basically a baseline player, could hardly stop Srinath, who cleverely changed his game and began rushing to the net as and when a chance arose. This upset the rhythm of the Russian as the Indian broke him again for a decisive 4-1 lead with a chipped volley to the corner of the court.

Derepasko tried hard to stop the Indian Davis Cupper and managed to break back to reduce the lead to 2-4 when Srinath momentarily looked short of ideas in the sixth game.
However, the Indian bounced back in style, holding his next two serves before proceeding to take the set in just 22 minutes with a thundering ace.

The pattern was the same in the second set as Srinath took a 2-1 lead. The lead ultimately turned match winning as Derepasco looked more and more unsure of himself. He hardly managed to hold on to his serves in the reminder of the match as Srinath raised his game to new heights, opening up the game with clever placements.

With Srinath serving for the match at 5-4, Derepasco looked like staging a fightback with the score reading 30-all. However, the Russian failed to cash in on the chance and Srinath took two points on trot and won the set and match with a neat chip which beat the Derepasko all ends up.

"I was confident of the victory. I had not seen Derepasko play earlier and studied him while he won his yesterday's semi-finals. He is a defensive player and I played to a plan and changed the pace of the game and rushed to the net whenever it was necessary. I used my drop shots to good effect,'' Srinath said.

Drepasco was all praise for his rival. ''Srinath really impressed. After a tentative start he looked transformed after his semi-final win yesterday, he said.''

Yesterday, Srinath got the better of Harsh Mankad 6-2,6-1, while Derepasko easily crushed fourth seed Vinod Sridhar 6-4, 6-2 in the semi-finals. P> UNI