India’s Diya Chitale stunned a higher ranked Manika Batra with a surprise win in the opening round of the 2025 WTT Contender in Tunis on Friday.
Chitale, the women’s singles reigning national champion, beat the seventh seeded Batra 3-2 in a closely fought contest.
Chitale, who fought her way through the qualification round, took held her nerves to take a topsy-turvy opening game 12-10.
Batra, however, fought back to win the next two 11-5, 11-9 to take the lead in the match.
With the match fast slipping out of her grasp, the 21-year-old Chitale upped her game. Batra struggled to cope up as she surrendered the next two games tamely with an identical 4-11 score line.
Chitale will now take on Germany’s Sabine Winter in the second round on Saturday.
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Chitale advances in women’s, mixed doubles
It was a glory day for Chitale, who advanced into the next rounds even in women’s doubles and mixed doubles disciplines in Tunis.
The third seeded women’s doubles pair of Chitale and Yashashwini Ghorpade blanked qualifiers Abir Haj Salah and Fadwa Garci 3-0 in the women’s singles opening round.
In mixed doubles, Chitale along with Manush Shah made it to the semi-finals.
Chitale and Shah took down the wild card Indian pairing of Sathiyan Gnanasekaran-Sreeja Akula 3-2 in the quarter-finals.
Seeded third, Shah and Chitale had started the competition with a 3-0 win over China’s Sun Yang and Hu Yi.
Elsewhere, the Indian mixed doubles pair of the young Ankur Bhattacharjee and Taneesha Kotecha put up a brave fight against the second seeds Sora Matsushima and Miwa Harimoto of Japan but went down 2-3 in the opening round.
Harmeet Desai and Ghorpade, meanwhile, lost out 1-3 to the pair from Brazil in the mixed doubles quarter-finals.
Desai, though, had a good start to his men’s singles campaign beating Chinese wildcard Wei Yufei 3-0.
He was the only Indian men’s singles paddler to advance to the second round with both Manav Thakkar and Gnanasekaran, losing their respective first round matches.
In men’s doubles, the second seeded pair of Thakkar-Shah advanced to the second round with a 3-0 win over Japan’s Mizuki Oikawa-Yuhi Sakai.