India’s top-ranked tennis player Sumit Nagal was ousted by Pedro Cachin of Argentina in the pre-quarterfinals of the Braunschweig ATP challenger on Wednesday.

Cachin, a world No. 117, moved into the quarterfinals of the event with a 6-4, 7-5 win over Nagal, the world No. 73 who was seeded second in the tournament.

After winning the first set smoothly, Cachin had a chance to close out the match after breaking Nagal to take a 5-4 lead in the second set.

But the Paris Olympic-bound Indian broke back to make it 5-5, only to lose his serve in the 11th game to hand Cachin a 6-5 lead.

The Argentine, who had lost to Rafael Nadal in the third round of the Madrid Masters in April this year, did not make any mistake this time and finished off the match in the 12th game of the second set.

Nagal had beaten Felipe Alves of Brazil in the first round of the clay event.

India’s top ranked tennis player Sumit Nagal moved to the second round with a facile win over Brazil’s Felipe Meligeni Alves in the Braunschweig ATP challenger in Braunschweig on Tuesday. The Olympic-bound Nagal, seeded second, cruised to a 6-1 6-4 win over Alves in the clay event. The world number 73 will take on Argentina’s Pedro Cachin in the round of 16 on Wednesday. The tournament will serve as preparation for the Paris Olympics, which begins later this month at the Roland Garros Stadium.

Last week, Nagal had made a first round exit from Wimbledon, losing to higher-ranked Miomir Kecmanovic of Serbia.

Nagal is enjoying a dream season as he had also qualified for the main draw of the Australian Open earlier this year. He had stunned 31st-seeded Alexander Bublik of Kazakhstan in the opening round to become the first Indian male tennis player to beat a seeded player in 35 years in a Slam.

He had also qualified for the main draw of the Indian Wells Masters and Monte-Carlo Masters, the ATP 1000 events.

The Indian has won two Challenger events this season the Heilbronn Challenger and the Chennai Open ATP Challenger. He also competed at the French Open, losing in the opening round.

India’s number one Sumit Nagal produced a feeble effort to go down against Luciano Darderi of Italy in a lop-sided final of the Perugia Challenger on Sunday.

The 26-year-old Nagal, who is now ranked a career-high 77 in the world, was no match for his world No. 41 Italian opponent, losing 1-6 2-6 in little over one hour in the summit clash as he failed to claim his third title this year.

Nagal had advanced to the final of the tournament with a fighting 7-6 (7-2) 1-6 6-2 win over former world No. 37 Bernabe Zapata Miralles of Spain.

The Indian had won the Chennai Challenger earlier this year that began with a historic second round outing at the Australian Open.

India’s top-ranked singles player Sumit Nagal made a first round exit from the Geneva Open after going down fighting against Argentina’s Sebastian Baez.

The world no.94 went down 6-7 (7) 3-6 to the Argentine, who is a clay court specialist, in a match that lasted one hour, 52-minutes here on Sunday.

“Gutted with the loss today. But good preparation ahead of Roland Garros. Paris next,” Nagal, who has qualified for the French Open, tweeted after the loss.

Nagal started off brightly taking an early 4-1 lead over Baez. He also had a set point.

But world no. 19 Baez, who has already won two titles on clay this season, showed his class to force a tiebreaker owing to his fantastic first serve performance.

In the second set, Baez continued to bank on his superb first serve, and wrapped up the proceedings in 38 minutes.