Top seed Suchanan Viratprasert of Thailand ousted Shruti Dhawan to move into the second round of the $10,000 ITF Futures women's tennis tournament at the DLTA Complex in Delhi on Monday.
Suchanan's compact strokes enabled her to win the first round match 6-3, 6-4.
Despite the huge difference in the ranking of the two players, there was little in terms of skill that separated them. Both Suchanan and Shruti, ranked 297 and 824 respectively, were limited in their game and preferred to battle it out from the baseline.
But the Thai was the steadier among the two, and her forehands were better refined that those of Shruti. Her short-swing backhands too were ideal for today's conditions, when morning rains had left the surface clean and dry. There was just enough breeze to keep the air cool but not too much to upset stroke-making.
Suchanan broke in the very first game of the match, and from there on it was a tough task for Shruti to catch up with her opponent.
The Chandigarh girl needed to improvise a bit as Suchanan was having little trouble in holding her serves but Shruti was bogged down by elementary errors.
There were flashes of brilliance from Shruti when her sparkling forehands caught the top seed wrong-footed.
In the first game of the second set, Shruti played a couple of good points with a forehand pass and a rare sliced backhand to get a break-point. But Suchanan produced an efficient corner-serve that caught her opponent on the weak backhand to hold serve.
That missed chance must have dealt a strong blow to the Indian's psyche and she failed to hold on to three breaks she gained after that. The Thai, on her part, played with assurance, and everytime she went down on serve, fought her way out of trouble to settle the issue.
Megha Vakharia and Isha Lakhani displayed their power tennis that had helped them put up strong shows in recent weeks.
The 19-year old Megha, who had reached three finals and won a title last year in Lagos, blasted Kamini Murugaboopathy with her unrelenting firepower on the way to a 6-2, 6-2 victory.
Isha, who won her maiden title in Indonesia, was even more clinical in her dismantling of Arthie Venkataraman 6-0, 6-1 in 53 minutes.
Ankita Bhambri, on the other hand, showed how much lack of match practice can hurt. The Delhi girl, playing her first professional match after winning the Satellite Masters in June, was given a run for her money by Preeti Rao before winning 6-3, 7-6 (7/3).
Ankita needed all her experience to stave off the threat but not before Preeti had played some uninhibited shotmaking to take the second set into the tie-breaker.
