Home favourite Sumit Nagal made a dominating start to his DafaNews Bengaluru Open 2024 campaign with a comfortable straight-sets win over France’s Geoffrey Blancaneax at the Karnataka State Lawn Tennis Association Stadium in Bengaluru on Tuesday.
The 26-year-old Indian, who broke in the world top-100 with a title triumph in Chennai last week, was clinical in his service games and exploited his opponent’s second serves to win the singles opening round clash 6-2, 6-2.
Nagal, seeded second here, earned eight break points in the opening set and converted two before pocketing the set with a comfortable hold in the eighth game. With the momentum in his favour, Nagal broke Blancaneaux in the very first game of the second set to set the tone.
His serve came under pressure for the first time in the fourth game of the second set but Nagal saved three break points to ultimately take a 3-1 lead and then sailed to victory in an hour and 28 minutes.
Nagal will now take on Hong Kong’s Coleman Wong, who defeated Rafael Collignon of Belgium 6-4, 7-6(4).
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