Local lad Ramkumar Ramananthan moved to the final round of the Chennai Open qualifiers, scoring a straight set win over Russia's Mikhail Elgin in the second round, here today.
Ramkumar survived some anxious moments before humbling Elgin, who is a top-100 player in doubles, 6-3 7-5.
Ramkumar will now fight it out with Slovakia's Norbert Gombos, who came from behind to shcok third seed Serbian Dusan Lajovic 2-6 6-1 6-4.
On another outside court, India's Sanam Singh, ranked 391, had a poor outing as he crashed out after suffering a 5-7 5-7 defeat against Frenchman Federik Nielsen, who is ranked 618.
Switzerland's Henri Laaksonen scored the major upset of the event when he disposed off Go Soeda of Japan in straight sets of 7-5, 6-4. Soeda had progressed to quarterfinals last year in Chennai Open.
With the main draw matches starting tomorrow evening, the final qualifying events would be held tomorrow afternoon. Results of second round qualifying:
H Laaksonen (SUI) d G Soeda (JPN) 75 64 N Gombos (SVK) d D Lajovic (SRB) 26 61 64 P Oswald (AUT) d R Ram (USA) 61 36 75
I Marchenko (UKR) d A Giannessi (ITA) 63 64 R Albot (MDA) d Z Zhang (CHN) 76(2) 63
A Kudryavtsev (RUS) d K Khachanov (RUS) 76(9) 63 F Nielsen (DEN) d S Singh (IND) 75 75.
R Ramanathan (IND) d M Elgin (RUS) 63 75.
