Abid enters Tennis Organisation Cup 2nd round

KARACHI: Abid Ali Akbar entered the second round of men’s singles in the $10,000 Tennis Organisation Cup at Belconti Resort Hotel club in Antalya, Turkey, on Tuesday.
Wild card entrant Abid defeated Fatih Taha of Turkey 6-0, 6-0 in the first round.
Aqeel Khan will face Alon Elia of Israel and Samir Iftikhar will take on sixth seed Vadim Alekseenko of Ukraine.
All three Pakistani players got wildcards to play singles and doubles events in this championship.
Aqeel and Abid will face
the third seed Austrian duo
of David Pamminger and Thomas Statzberger in the first round.
“President Pakistan Tennis Federation (PTF) requested the president of Turkey’s tennis association to give these players wildcards in both singles and doubles categories, which he accepted,” said a source associated with PTF.
Consequently, the source added, three singles and three doubles wildcards have been given to Aqeel, Samir, and Abid, who are part of Pakistani Davis Cup team, for the three ITF Futures in Turkey.
“They missed the first event since they were playing the final of Davis Cup group-II,” added the source.
Aqeel and Abid managed to reach the quarter-finals by beating the fourth seed Turkish pair of Sefa Suluoglu and Anil Yuksel 2-6, 7-5(10-1).
But the pair was defeated by Russian duo of Kirill Dmitriev and Andrei Plotniy 4-6, 6-7(4) in the quarter-finals.
This is the second $10,000 event they are currently playing and the third event is scheduled from October 5-11.