Sport - Tennis   

Harsh, Sunil face off in opening round

By Kalyan Ashok

GULBARGA Aug. 26. The main draw of the second Stellar-ITF Futures tennis championship has been pushed back by a day and will begin on Tuesday as the qualifying matches stretched into the third successive day at the Chandrashekar Patil Stadium here today.

Nevertheless, without waiting for the final list of eight qualifiers, the ITF Supervisor for the event, Puneet Gupta, did well to finalise the main draw for both singles and doubles.

The draw of lots for the singles came up with a tough line-up for the two Davis Cuppers, Harsh Mankad and Sunil Kumar, who face off in the opening round.

Given their standings, it is indeed a cruel draw, but from the spectators' point of view it should be the match of the day in the first round.

However, both shrugged off the match-up saying, "you really can't do much about it,'' but vowed to give their best shot.

The in-form Sunil Kumar is all charged up after his maiden triumph in New Delhi, while Harsh packs is counting on his experience to make that vital difference.

But, given the record of the players, the day's form should decide the result.

Top-seeded Rohan Bopanna takes on seasoned campaigner Vinod Sridhar in the opener, while second-seeded Mustafa Ghouse takes on Roy Sichel of Israel. Ghouse, the quarterfinalist in New Delhi is looking for a better outing here, but the bottom half that he is in is quite strong, including Sunil Kumar, Harsh Mankad and Nitin Kirtane.

Third-seeded Viktor Bruthans of Slovakia plays steady baseliner Nourmatov of Russia.

To make up for the loss of time, the organisers will try and finish most of the first round ties by Tuesday itself, barring the ones that involve qualifiers.

The final round of the qualifying ties are expected to be over by 10 a.m. and will be followed by the main draw matches. There were no qualifying matches in the doubles and all the matches will be main draw contests and the composition includes 12 direct entries and three wild cards.

The seedings (Indians unless indicated otherwise):

Singles: 1. Rohan Bopanna, 2. Mustafa Ghouse, 3. Viktor Bruthans (Slovakia), 4. Nitin Kirtane, 5. Vijay Kannan, 6. Sunil Kumar, 7. Ajay Ramaswamy, 8. Eliran Dooyev (Israel).

Doubles: 1. Rohan Bopanna/Vijay Kannan, 2. Viktor Bruthans/Michal Varsanyi (Svk), 3. Sanchai Ratiwatana/Sonchat Ratiwatana (Thai), 4. Mustafa Ghouse/Sunil Kumar.

* The results (qualifying second round): Somdev Varman bt Sekkat Mehdi (Mor) 6-1, 4-6, 6-2; M. Maaravi (Isr) bt Kim Jun Young (Kor) 3-6, 7-5, 6-3; Stephen Nugent (Irl) bt Md Yasser Arafat 6-1, 6-3; Alexi Ageev (Rus) bt Nipun Gupta 4-6, 7-5, 6-1; Punna Vishal bt Vivek Jhaveri 6-1, 6-3; Sourav Panja bt Ritesh Chitlangiya 7-6 (12-10), 7-5; Amod Wakalkar bt Jan Oliver Christ (Ger) 6-3, 6-1; P. Ravishankar bt Suresh Paul 6-0, 6-2; Dori Sodvnik (Isr) bt Divij Sharan 7-5, 7-5; Yew Ming Si (Mas) bt Sanchai Ratiwatana (Thai) 6-4, 4-6, 6-4; Yav Benzvi (Isr) bt Benjamin Xavier 6-4, 7-5.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport

News: Front Page | National | Southern States | Other States | International | Opinion | Business | Sport | Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary |

Stories in this Section

Athletics

• Anuradha sets National mark
  
  Chess
  
• China assured of title
  
  Cricket
  
• A tremendous achievement
• Stewart's feat
• ACB-ACA guidelines forwarded to ICC for consideration
• Dream outing for Suresh
• Ganguly to get in touch with Dalmiya
• Border replaces Buchanan
  
  Swimming
  
• Good medal haul by Indians
  
  Tennis
  
• Harsh, Sunil face off in opening round
  
  Bridge
  
• Indian challenge ends
  
  

Copyright © 2002, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu