Chennai Open 2022: India’s Karman Kaur Thandi stuns Chloe Paquet in first round

Chennai, Sep 12 (IANS) India’s Karman Kaur Thandi advanced to the second round of the women’s singles event at the Chennai Open 2022 WTA 250 tennis tournament after a hard-fought win over Chloe Paquet of France, here on Monday.

Playing on the hard court of the SDAT Stadium, Karman, a wildcard entrant, beat the eighth-seed French player 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 in two hours and 35 minutes.

The Indian tennis player, 359th in the WTA rankings, hit the ground running against world No 109 Chloe Paquet and found the break in the first game.

Thandi led Paquet 4-3 at the end of the seventh game. However, high humidity took its toll on the Indian tennis player as her unforced errors in the first set increased to 19. Paquet eventually took the lead in the match by winning the last three games.

The unforced errors kept flowing from Karman Kaur Thandi’s racket in the second set. The Indian, however, pulled off strong serves and crosscourt forehands to get back into the match.

Paquet pushed Thandi on the backfoot with a 2-0 lead upfront in the decider. The Indian mounted a comeback to level the game and then found her second break of the set to lead 4-3.

The 24-year-old Indian followed up the break by winning the next service game without dropping a point and then sealing one of the biggest wins of her career under challenging conditions.

This was also the first win for Karman Kaur against Chloe Paquet. The Indian had lost to the French player in straight sets in 2019. Thandi will take on 2014 Wimbledon finalist Eugenie Bouchard of Canada in the second round of the WTA 250 tournament.

India’s top women’s singles tennis player Ankita Raina will be in action on Tuesday. She will face fourth seed Tatjana Maria of Germany.

–IANS

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