Prajnesh beats Jack to enter Cary Challenger's quarters

Cary (US): Indian tennis player Prajnesh Gunneswaran came out with a fighting performance as he defeated America's Jack Sock in three-set thriller to enter the last eight of the ongoing Atlantic Tire Championships, an ATP Challenger event, held at Cary, North Carolina, United States..

Prajnesh, fourth-seeded southpaw, defeated Sock 6-7 (3), 6-2, 7-6(5) in a tight round two contest, which lasted almost three hours. The gritty Indian broke the serve of Sock, who reached a career-high singles ranking of eight in 2017 but is now placed 253, thrice and dropped his own serve only once in the slugfest.

Ranked 146 in the ATP rankings, Prajnesh will now lock horns with Brazilian qualifier Thomaz Bellucci for a spot in the semifinals of the USD 52,080 hard court tournament. Belluci was ranked as high as 21 at one stage of his career, in which he has won four singles ATP titles. The 32-year-old is now ranked 297.

Another Indian participating in the event, Ramkumar Ramanathan, has already made an exit. In singles, Ramkumar lost 6-3, 4-6, 1-6 while in doubles, he along with Andre Goransson, lost 1-6, 4-6 to the duo of Hunter Reese and Sem Verbeek.