MELBOURNE: Maaya Rajeswaran Revathi went down to Russian Anna Pushkareva 4-6, 1-6 in a battle of 16-year-olds in the Australian Open girls’ singles first round. Maaya, ranked 56 in the juniors and training at the Rafa Nadal Academy in Mallorca, Spain, struggled with her serve against Pushkareva, ranked 39. She was teeing off on her return. The Russian struck in the fifth game of the opening set, but Maaya, who flexed her arms and opened up the court, broke back in the eighth game to level scores at 4-4. For Maaya, the problem was her second serve, which was sitting up and right in her opponent’s range at just over 100 kmph. Pushkareva swung hard, going for the lines. The Russian broke again in the ninth game, when the Indian had three second serves. In the second set, Maaya, who held serve in the opening game, couldn’t do much else as Pushkareva won the next six games to close the match. Meanwhile, India’s 17-year-old Arnav Vijay Paparkar went down 3-6, 4-6 in one hour and 39 minutes to Indian-American Vihaan Reddy, 16, in the first round of the boys’ singles. Vihaan, whose family hails from Yadgir in north Karnataka, represented India two years ago in the Under-14 event at Wimbledon. His parents, Basannagouda Reddy and Roopavathi Patil, both software engineers, shifted to the United States. Arnav had the bigger serve, but Vihaan’s solid all-court play won the day for him. In the boys’ doubles, Arnav and Indian-American Roshan Santosh went down 2-6, 4-6 to the top seeds, Yannick Theodor Alexandrescou of France and Japan’s Ryo Tabata.
