U.S. Men's Clay Court C'ships: Balaji-Begemann upset US Open champion

N Sriram Balaji and Andre Begemann clinched a massive win over three-time reigning US Open champion Rajeev Ram of USA who was partnering with world no.4 Austin Krajicek at the ATP 250 U.S. Men's Clay Court Championship in Houston on Wednesday.

Three Indian pairs in the doubles draw won their opening first-round matches at this ATP 250 event in Houston.

Balaji and Begemann defeated the top-seeded pairing of Rajeev-Austin Krajicek in a three-setter (3-6, 7-6, 10-6) to qualify for the quarterfinals.

They didn't have a solid start in the match as both Balaji and Begemann could not hold on to their final serving games of the first set and went down a double break to drop the set, 3-6.

The second set was much closer as no one dropped any game throughout the set and it went into a tiebreaker where the Indo-German pair won a mini-break on the set point to push the match into a super tie-breaker.

The super tie-breaker was going much closer till 6-6 but then Rajeev gave two mini-breaks on his serve and trailed 6-9. Then, Balaji with three match points opportunity, converted the match in their favour on his serve.

They will be up against an all-Indian pair of Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan and Arjun Kadhe who had a dominant 6-4, 6-2 first-round win over Marcus Daniell-Luis David Martínez.

Earlier, the pairing of Vijay Sundar Prashanth and Anirudh Chandrasekar defeated the former top-10 singles player Frances Tiafoe and Michael Mmoh in Round of 16.

But, they could not continue their winning momentum and bowed out to former Wimbledon Champion Max Purcell and Jordan Thompson in the quarters.