Braunschweig Challenger: Sumit Nagal exits in the second round

Indian ace singles player, Sumit Nagal, had an early exit at the ATP 125 Challenger event in Braunschweig, Germany on Wednesday. He conceded a straight-set (4-6, 5-7) defeat to Pedro Cachin of Argentina in the second round.

This was the second meeting between the two players on the ATP Circuit and Cachin came out on top on both of those occasions.

Quality return game

This was a very exciting match as both the players had to do a lot of hard work on most of their holds in the match because of their quality and precise return game throughout the match.

There were many deuce games in this match, which lasted for one hour and 43 minutes despite a straight-set affair. There were as many as six service breaks in this match, three per set.

The Argentinian had many more swift returns as compared to Nagal. He had an almost fifty percent record on the returns, having converted 25 of those in 51 opportunities.

The second-seeded Indian will be very disappointed with an early exit in the tournament and his performance, especially at his favourite clay court. However, he has two more tournaments before heading towards the Paris Olympics.

Dominating display by Balaji-Escobar

Olympic-bound Indian men's doubles player N.Sriram Balaji had an outstanding start to the tournament as he partnered with Ecuador's Gonzalo Escobar and took a dominating (6-3, 6-0) victory in the first round.

They showed full domination in the match and also earned a bagel (6-0) in the second set against the Bolivian pairing of Boris Arias and Federico Zeballos to progress through to quarters.

They will next take on the mixed pairing of Argentinian Guillermo Duran and Brazil's Marcel Demoliner on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the All-Indian pairing of Jeevan Neduncheziyan and Vishnu Prasanth had a hard-fought defeat in three sets (6-4, 2-6, 5-10) against fourth-seeded Matwe Middlekoop and Denys Molchanov in the first round.