Reet Sethi (left) & Mable Abraham rejoice after drubbing Sai Jailakshmi & Stutti Smit.

MUMBAI, May 7: Top seed Gaurav Natekar (Maharashtra) took his appointed place in the men's singles quarter-finals with a facile 6-3, 6-3 victory over unseeded Jay Patel of Gujarat in the Sterling Resorts Mumbai Hard Court Tennis Tournament at the Shivaji Park Gymkhana, here today.

Natekar, losing finalist in last week's Maharashtra State Hard Court Tournament, set up a quarter-final clash with qualifier Chandraveer Singh of Rajasthan to be held tomorrow. His clash with Patel spilled over from yesterday's seven pre-quarter-final ties.

There was a major upset in the men's doubles event when third-seeded Tamil Nadu pair of CV Anand and R Balaji were shut out by Prem Prakash (TN) and Ronny Sarkar (Bengal) who won the first set 7-6 (tie-break 7-2) at which stage Anand and Balaji conceded the match.

Aarti Ponappa and Rushmi Chakravarti made the women's semi-finals with a 6-1, 6-3 win over Priya Wal and K Subhashini while Aparna Srinivasan and Nehal Chopra got the better of Reetu Sethi and Mable Abraham to make the last-four grade. Aparna and Nehal won comfortably at 6-4 6-4.

RESULTS

Men's singles (PQF): Gaurav Natekar (Mah) bt Jay Patel (Guj) 6-3 6-3.

Men's doubles (QF): Umang Chadda (Guj) & Amod Wakalkar (Mah) bt Bhaskar Choudhary (Asm) & Vijay Kannan (Del) 6-2 6-1; R G Arvind & DR Jayadeva (Kar) bt Agastya Sigtia & Sikka Singh (Mah) 6-1 6-3; Prem Prakash (TN) & Ronny Sarkar (Ben) bt CV Anand & R Balaji (TN) 7-6 (7-2) (conceded); KV Ganesh (TN) & Chandraveer Singh (Raj) bt Shailesh Dhoble (Mah) & Jagdish Tanwar (Raj) 7-6 (9-7) 4-6, 6-3

Women's doubles (PQF): Reet Sethi & Mable Abraham (Mah) bt Sai Jailakshmi (TN) & Stutti Smit (Mah) 6-0 6-0; Joy Rodrigues & Pooja Deshmukh (Mah) bt A Shruti & Lakshmi Jayaraman (TN) 6-1 6-2.

QF: Arati Ponnappa (Kar) & Rushmi Chakravarthy (TN) bt Priya Wal & K Subhashini (TN) 6-1 6-3; Aparna Srinivasan & Nehal Chopra (Mah) bt Reetu & Mable 6-4 6-4

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