Manish Malhotra crashes out

Fast serves and power strokeplay dominated the second round as third seed Manisha Malhotra crashed out of the $10,000 ITF women's tennis tournament in Delhi on Wednesday.

In the biggest upset of the day, the second of the tournament, third-seed Manisha was beaten 4-5, 1-4, 1-4 by Jyotshna Vasisht, a new entrant to the local circuit, in just an hour and 10 minutes.

Manisha looked troubled from the very beginning as she was erratic with her serve and her mobility around the court also slowed down. Vasisht took advantage of her rival's shortcomings and wrapped up the tiebreaker 7-1.

Vasisht progressed there on without looking back and relied on her power strokes to break Manisha in the first and third games to close out the second set at 4-1.

In the third set, Manisha tried to make a comeback of sorts as she took a service game off Vasisht after trailing 0-2. However, any hopes of a five-setter were dashed as she committed four double faults to virtually hand the game to her opponent. Serving for the match, Vasisht made good of the opportunity and fired an ace to march into quarterfinals of the tournament.

In another power-packed match of the day, eighth-seed Rushmi Chakravorthi defeated Dominika Luzarova 4-2, 4-5 (7/4), 5-3, 4-2 in a gruelling two-hour-ten-minutes match.

The match was evenly poised midway through the third set, at three games all and one set each. Luzarova began contesting every line call by the chair umpire.

Rushmi, in the meantime, lifted her game and made use of her opponent's loss of concentration to take the next two sets quite comfortably.

The highlight of Rushmi's game was her strong serve and powerful grasscourt forehand shots that left little chance for Luzarova.

Maja Mlakar (Slovenia), who ousted top seed Katarina Daskovic (Yugoslavia) in the first round on Tuesday, continued her fine run and made it to the quarter-finals by beating Anna Nefedova 4-2, 5-3, 4-0 in just over an hour.

In the best match of the tournament so far, seventh seed Andrea Van Den Hurk of the Netherlands pulled off another upset for the day as she overcame a fighting Sonal Phadke in a five-set thriller 5-3, 0-4, 5-4 (7/2), 2-4, 4-1 lasting one hour and 55 minutes.

The match kept swinging from one side to the other as the two players, both boasting powerful serves and equally good returns, put up a fine display of shots in their repertoire.

After exchanging breaks with her opponent in the first two games of the first set, Hurk broke Phadke in the seventh game to surge ahead and win the set.

Phadke came back strongly to whitewash her opponent 4-0 in the next set to tie the match at one set each.

The third set went to the tiebreak after the two players traded breaks in the fifth and sixth games, but Hurk raced off to an unassailable 5-1 lead and closed out the tiebreak at 7-2. Again Phadke summoned all her abilities to take the next set at 4-2 only to go down tamely in the decider.

Meanwhile, Slovenian Vesenjak sisters made light work of their opponents with identical scores of 4-1, 4-0, 4-0.

Urska, seeded fourth, crushed Aarthi Venkatraman in just 45 minutes while Masa seeded sixth took two minutes more than her sister in thrashing Ankita Bhambri.

Archana Venkatraman made it to the quarterfinals by beating Karishma Patel 3-5, 5-3, 4-1, 4-1.

Archana who upset fifth seed Sai Jayalakhsmi in the first round on Tuesday, will meet fourth seed Urska Vesenjak while Masa Vesenjak takes on Jyotsna Vashist in the quarterfinals on Thursday.

In the other quaterfinals, Maja Mlakar will lock horns with Van Den Hurk and Rushmi Chakravorthi will meet the winner of the Olga Kaliojnaia-Shruti Dhawan match.