Arjun Kadhe, Rithvik Bollipalli Win Maiden ATP Tour Title at Almaty Open

Maharashtra tennis player Arjun Kadhe and Rithvik Bollipalli of Telangana won their maiden title on the ATP Tour, producing a stunning comeback to win the men's doubles title at the Almaty Open 2024 ATP 250 tennis tournament at Almaty in Kazakhstan.

End Kadhe and Bollipalli of Pune prevail over Nicolas Barrientos of Colombia and Skander Mansouri of Tunisia 3-6, 7-6(3), 14-12 in a super tiebreaker for their first ATP Tour title. The Indian pair, who had won the Challenger title in Olbia of Italy last year, reached the finals of the ATP Tour for the first time as a pair after outsmarting the German duo of Jakob Schnaitter and Mark Wallner 7-6(6), 6-3 in the semifinals, information reaching here reported.

Earlier in the meet, Kadhe and Bollipalli had beaten Italy's Marco Bortolotti and Finland's Patrik Niklas-Salminen in the opening round before shocking France's Sadio Doumbia and Fabien Reboul, seeded second, in the quarters.

Kadhe and Bollipalli had an apathetic start and were pushed onto the backfoot from the very beginning as they lost their first service game and went on to lose the first set. The second set was a tightly contested affair with both sides not losing a single service till it reached 6-6. It was India that levelled the set score as they reached the top in the tiebreaker

They were on the back foot at one stage in the super tiebreak to decide, trailing 6-9 as Barrientos and Mansouri came out firing. Kadhe and Bollipalli brought them back to wriggle out of the clinch at five championship points to win the match to carry home the title that lasted one hour and 41 minutes.

Earlier, Indian star Yuki Bhambri and France's Albano Olivetti, the third seeds, were upstaged in the opening round by Schnaitter and Wallner. The fourth-seeded team of India's N. Sriram Balaji and Argentina's Guido Andreozzi were knocked out in the semifinals by Barrientos and Mansouri.