Sports

Zane Khan faces Crawford in final of ITF WTT Cup men's tennis championships

Sentinel Digital Desk

PUNE: Zane Khan of the USA on Saturday made it to the third straight men's singles final and set up the summit clash with Great Britain's Oliver Crawford in the $15,000 ITF WTT Cup men's tennis championships.

In the semi-finals, 19-year-old Khan, the winner of the Lucknow and the Indore legs of the Indian ITF swing, upset 25-year-old fifth seeded Swede Jonathan Mridha 6-1, 7-5 in a two-hour 13-minute duel.

Khan played flawlessly, breaking Mridha in the second and fourth games of the first set. In the second set, Khan recovered from being 2-5 down to claim five games in a row and win the set and the match.

In the second semi-final match between 21-year-old Oliver Crawford of Great Britain stopped the good run of sixth seeded Manish Sureshkumar and won 6-4, 6-2 in one hour and 23 minutes.

Crawford, who has the distinction of beating two other Indians Dev Javia and Arjun Kadhe on way to the last-four, meted the same treatment to Sureshkumar who looked jaded due to long matches this week. (IANS)