French Open qualifiers: Somdev storms into third round

Somdev Devvarman stormed into the third round of the qualifying event of the French Open with a straight set thrashing of Daniel King-Turner of New Zealand in Paris on Wednesday.

The sixth seeded Indian scored an easy 6-1, 6-2 win over his Kiwi opponent in one hour and 12 minutes in the second round of the clay court Grand Slam's qualifiers.

Somdev will next take on Frenchman Adrian Mannarino who beat Ramon Delgado of Paraguay 6-2, 7-6.

It was a dominating performance by the top Indian as he took just 29 minutes to win the first set 6-1 after breaking his opponent's serve in the fourth and sixth games.

The scoreline was level 1-1 after the second game but after that it was Somdev all the way. The Indian broke the Kiwi to make the score line 3-1 and then repeated the same to surge to 5-1 before pocketing the first set in his serve.

Somdev did not allow Turner to come back into the match as the Indian broke his opponent in the very first game of the second set to go up 2-0.

Both the players then held serve before Somdev broke his opponent in the seventh game to make it 5-2. The Indian then held on his serve to win the second set 6-2 and the game in one hour and 12 minutes.

Somdev though had to survive some nervy moments in the second set as he won a couple of games after exchange of deuce points. That was why the second set lasted 43 minutes.

Somdev now remains the only hope for India in the men's single as Prakash Amritraj had crashed out of the qualifying event with a 6-4, 2-6 6-8 loss to Joao Souza of Brazil in the first round.