National double team knocked out

Accra (Greater Accra) The national doubles pair of Courage Anyidoho and Gunther Dake, on Tuesday, failed to progress to the next stage of the doubles event at the on-going ITF Africa Satellite circuit table tennis competition in Accra.

They went down 7-5, 4-6, 6-4 to James Aukland of Britian and Daniel Norberg of Sweden.

It was the Ghanaians who started stronger, as they easily won their serve and forced their opponents to double duce on theirs.

The Ghanaians' could not sustain the early pressure as they were broken in the fourth serve with powerful groundstrokes and beautiful across court passing shots.

They came back strongly in the 9th serve, broke the opponents serve with good attacking play, especially at the net after they seemed to have found an antidote to the fast serves of Norberg.

However, this break could not propelled them into winning the first set as they allowed their opponents to break again in the 12th serve to end the first set at 5-7.

The Ghanaians rallied in the second set and won all their serves breaking the opponents' in the 5th serve to win 6-4.

In the final set the Ghanaians interestingly lost their focus as they started challenging the umpire's calls and committed errors, particularly, on the part of Courage.

Their opponents capitalised on this and broke their serve in the 10th serve after they had all won their previous serves to win 4-6.

Earlier, in another doubles encounter, the Ghanaian pair George Afarku and Thomas Debrah beat Ghedina Giunior of Germany and Ryan Thompson of the USA 6-7, 6-2, 7-6.

The second round of the men's singles continues on Wednesday with the tournament's top seed Radim Zitko of Czech Republic playing Tamba Samassa from Mali, while Gunther Darkey faces Nigeria's Sunday Maku and Courage Anyidoho pairs up with South Africa's Stegmann Dirk.