At the Deccan Gymkhana on Friday, Srinath beat Radim Zitko winner of the first leg in Mumbai 6-2, 6-2 and Messmer finalist in the first leg toppled top seed Tom Chicoine (United States) 6-4, 6-1.

Messmer now has a 2-1 record over the American. Earlier, he had defeated Chicoine in the first-leg semi-finals but had lost to the same opponent in the second-leg quarter-finals last week.

Messmer matched his opponent from the start of the first set. Games went with serve till fifth game before Messmer broke the American in the seventh game to claim the first set 6-2 and thrice in the second set to repeat the scoreline.

Srinath's rival was off-colour today. He began with a double fault and kepterring with his serves for a total of seven double faults. Srinath, on the other hand, fired five aces to take control.

Three Indians qualify
THREE Indians Vasudeva Reddy, Saurav Panja and Mustafa Ghouse qualified for the ITF Satellite Masters tennis tournament in Mumbai from November 8-12.In the play-off matches to decide the last three qualifiers for Masters, Reddy defeated Sunil Kumar 6-3, 6-3; Saurav Panja downed Niko Karagiannis 7-6 (7-4), 7-5 and Mustafa Ghouse ousted K Shivshankar 7-5, 6-1.

The trio will join 10 Indians and 11 others in the main draw.

Results (semi-finals) (Seedings in prefix, country, ranking in suffix): Singles: 3-Prahlad Srinath (India, 312) bt 2-Ridko Zaman (Czech, 464) 6-2, 6-2; 4-Thomas Messmer (Germany, 949) bt 1-Tom Chicoine (USA, 500) 6-4, 6-1. Doubles: 1-Nitin Kirtane-Sandeep Kirtane (Ind, 575) bt Prahlad Srinath-Vasudeva Reddy (Ind) 6-7 (5-7), 7-6 (8-6), 7-6 (7-3); Rohan Bopanna-Kedar Shah (Ind) bt 4-Syed Fazaluddin (Ind)-Abraham Doug(USA) 6-2, 5-7, 6-2.