Ancic beats Galvani at Kingfisher Open

Mumbai:

Croat Mario Ancic outclassed his Italian rival Stefano Galvani to storm into the singles quarterfinals of the Kingfisher Airlines Tennis Open on Thursday. Ancic, seeded second, brought off a 6-1, 7-6 (8-6) victory over Galvani to advance to a match-up with Stefan Koubek of Austria, ranked 118 in the world, who got past Nicolas Devilder of France, placed just a rung below Koubek, 7-5, 6-3 in another second round clash. The 22-year-old Split-born Ancic, ranked 11th in the world and having two ATP titles to his name, rocketed off to a great start by overwhelming his 29-year-old rival, who is ranked 108th, in the first set. However, Ancic, who has a 137-94 win-loss career record in singles play coming into the tournament, was matched stroke by stroke by his less fancied opponent in the second set, stretching it into a tie-breaker. Ancic was trailing his rival before drawing level at 4-all, but at this juncture Galvani committed two backhand errors to leave the Croatian second seed with a commanding 6-4 lead. (PTI)