NEW DELHI: Senthil Kumar had to work hard to book his place in the boys semifinals of the ITF J300 event while Maaya Rajeshwaran advanced to the last-four when her opponent withdrew mid-way from her quarterfinal, here on Thursday.
Top seed and favourite Senthil, ranked as high as 36 in the world, was up against compatriot Samarth Sahita, who belied his 280th rank with a stunning fight.
Senthil had to dig deep into his resources to beat Samarth 6-3 3-6 6-4 in the gruelling quarterfinal at court number 3 at the DLTA Complex.
It could have been an all-Indian semifinal too but Arnav Paparkar fell to fourth seed Korean Donghyun Hwang 6-4 4-6 5-7 in another high-quality quarterfinal in the boys event.
Now Senhtil and Hwang will clash for a place in the summit final.
The other semifinal will be between Korea's Hyon Seok Seo and America's Rosha Santhosh.
Seo fought past Latvia's Arturs Zagras 7-5 6-4 while Santhosh also had to work hard to earn a 6-1 2-6 7-6(4) win over Kazakhstan's Damir Zhalgasbay.
In the girls singles, Maaya continued her giant-killing run as she knocked out seventh seed Rada Zolotareva, who pulled out of the quarterfinal contest when the Indian was leading 6-3 1-0.
Maaya, though, now has a tough task at hand as she will up against second seed Eleejah Inisan, who ended the run of Serbian fifth seed Petra Koljikusic 7-5 6-0.
The other semifinal will be between Polina Berezina and Ekaterina Tupitsyna, who sent packing eighth seed Briton Allegra Korpanec Davies 7-6(9) 7-5.
The boys doubles final will be between fourth seeds Artem Bogomolov/Roman Kharlamov and Alan Aiukhanov/Alexey Shibaev after they won their respective semifinals.