Karman Kaur Thandi and Pranjala Yadlapalli fought bravely but came up short in the end as both of them bowed out of the girls’ singles as well as the girls’ doubles events at the 2016 Australian Open on Wednesday. In the singles third round, the 10th seeded Yadlapalli lost 5-7, 5-7 to the eighth-seeded Anastasia Potapova of Russia while the unseeded Thandi succumbed to a 3-6, 7-5, 7-5 defeat to Australian Sara Tomic.
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In the doubles, they went down 6-7, 5-7 to the local pair of Jaimee Fourlis and Maddison Inglis in the quarter-finals.
Thandi’s loss to the 452nd Tomic was a tough one for the 17-year-old Indian as she served for the match twice, but was broken each time. After blazing through the first set 6-3, the 704th ranked Thandi looked poised for a win as she served for it at 5-4 in the second set.
But her higher-ranked opponent came back strongly to take the next three games and enforce a decider. The third set was topsy-turvy as Bernard Tomic’s sister first made the breakthrough and went up 4-2.
The undeterred Karman battled back to level things at 4-4 and even served for the match for the second time at 5-4. But her joy was short-lived as Tomic once again broke back and pocketed the hard-fought win in 1 hour 54 minutes.
Yadlapalli and Potapova too were locked in a gritty fight and they traded two breaks in the initial part of both the sets. But it was the Russian’s decisive third break in both the sets that sealed her place in the quarter-finals after 1 hour 28 minutes.
With this, the Indian juniors' campaign comes to an end at the 2016 Australian Open.
