BENGALURU, May 15, 2026 (by Anirudh Suresh)
Top seed Keegan Smith and fourth seed Philip Sekulic will clash in the final of the Karnataka Open ATP 50 Challenger on Saturday after both players registered convincing victories in their respective semi-final matches today.
While Smith brushed aside the challenge of former world No. 40 Ilya Ivashka 6-4, 6-4, Sekulic steamrolled past wildcard and home favourite Kriish Tyagi, who in the quarterfinal had upset second seed Hamish Stewart. Sekulic needed just 62 minutes as he dominated the 19-year-old from Bengaluru 6-0, 6-2 to book a place in Saturday’s final.
Smith taking on Sekulic will mean that there will be a first-time winner, with both players never having previously won a title on the ATP Challenger Tour.
On the day, the top-seeded Smith had a very tough match on paper, with Ivashka having just dropped 11 games en route to the quarterfinal, but the 27-year-old from the United States produced his best performance of the week, yet, to completely neutralize the Belarusian’s threat.
Ivashka lost serve at 1-1 in the first set and it was pretty much one-way traffic from that point onwards, despite the scoreline suggesting otherwise. Smith (33) won more than twice as many return points as his opponent (15) and was supremely dominant on his own serve, facing just one break point the entire match.
The top seed from the United States was further aided by the fact that Ivashka lost his composure during the match, getting frustrated by multiple line calls. The 32-year-old from Belarus got two code violations in the match and, as a result, ended up getting a point penalty in the second set. A combination of Smith being clinical and Ivashka’s inability to find any rhythm whatsoever resulted in an easy passage to the final for the world number 289.
The much-anticipated second semi-final of the day featuring hometown hero Tyagi, who made the final four against all odds despite being ranked outside the top 1300, proved to be even more anticlimactic. Sekulic played a breathtakingly dominant first set as the 22-year-old from Australia lost just six points in the entire set. It didn’t help Tyagi’s cause that the 19-year-old got no free points on serve, winning just 36% of his first-serve points.
Tyagi showed a semblance of fight in the second set, relatively at least, but after holding twice to level things at 2-2, he lost four consecutive games to surrender the set and the contest. As it turned out, the 19-year-old was unable to generate a single break point in the entirety of the match, and won just 26 points compared to Sekulic’s 56.
With a victory on Saturday, Sekulic, currently ranked 311 in the world, will jump 38 spots to 273. Smith, on the other hand, will break into the Top 250 for the first time in his career should he be crowned champion.
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