Amit Tambe upsets third seed Manav Arora at Jayant Roy Memorial Mumbai ITF Tennis tournament

Amit Tambe shocked third seed Manav Arora to provide an explosive start to the Jayant Roy Memorial $ 400 Mumbai ITF Tennis Tournament on Saturday.

Mumbai’s Amit Tambe notched up an upset victory over Arora in the 45 plus men’s singles on the opening day of the tournament, taking place at the MSLTA and Wodehouse Gymkhana.

After winning the closely contested first set, which saw both players Tambe and Arora trade a break each to level the score at 5-5, Tambe broke Manav’s serve for a crucial lead. Tambe then served out the set 7-5 and displayed some excellent shot-making and had a brilliant all-round performance as he prevailed over Arora.

Tambe overcomes scorching heat and seeded opponent

The scorching heat and humidity saw the pace slow down a bit in the second set, which Tambe won quite comfortably at 6-3, despite some long rallies. Tambe held his serve and broke Arora's serve on a couple of occasions, which proved to be crucial.

In another tough encounter, Nikhil Rao won a keenly contested marathon encounter that lasted 2 hours and 30 minutes before prevailing over Kuldip Rawat, 6-4, 7-5.

Other results were expected to be in line with fancied players, led by Niteen Kirrtane, who won in an easy encounter. Kirrtane, seeded second, accounted for Great Britain’s Jeff Bhatija 6-1, 6-0.

Results (Round 1)

Men’s singles 45 plus (Venue: MSLTA)

Niteen Kirrtane (IND) bt Jeff Bhatija (GBR) 6-1, 6-0

Nikhil Rao (IND) bt Kuldeep Rawat (IND) 6-4, 7-5

Gopal Soni (IND) bt Gagan Kant Sharma (IND) 6-2, 6-2

Sunil Lulla (IND) bt Jaikishan Lakhani (IND) 6-0, 6-2

Amit Tambe (IND) bt Manav Arora (IND) 7-5, 6-3

Vinayak Bet Giri (IND) bt Channabasavakumar Badigannavar (IND) 7-6, 6-3

Gaurav Jaitly (IND) bt Akhil Mathur (IND) 6-4, 7-5

Deepak Patil (IND) bt Ageet Kumar (IND) 6-2, 6-1

Ashish Dikey (IND) bt Sanjay Kalgaonkar (IND) 6-1, 6-2

Yati Gujarathi (IND) bt Jitendra Shinde (IND) 6-1, 6-1.

Men’s singles 70 plus (Venue: Wodehouse Gymkhana)

Ratnakarrao Anne (IND) Sushil Gujarathi (IND) 6-4, 3-6, 10-5

Dhaval Patel (IND) bt Ratnakar Joshi (IND) 6-0, 6-1

Tahir Ali (IND) bt Shiv Mor (IND) 6-2, 6-1

Ali Rymbai Hydar (IND) bt Parvatesam Ginagam 6-1, 6-2

Laxman Ambulkar bt Darshan Maria (IND) 6-2, 6-1.