Date:22/10/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/10/22/stories/2007102260461800.htm

Sport - Tennis

Seven Indians qualify

Special Correspondent

GULBARGA: The ITF men’s tennis caravan rolled into Gulbarga from Bellary for the second week of action in Karnataka.

At the Chandrashekar Patil Stadium tennis courts here on Sunday, seven Indians qualified to join the 10 direct entries and four wild cards, in the main draw of 32 for the Gulbarga Open, which carries prize money of $15000.

The Romanian duo of Teodar and Dacian Craciun, seeded second at Bellary, and Adrian Vasile Gavrilla (seeded seventh), pulled out for varied reasons here, which automatically pushed the champion at Bellary — Rainer Eitzinger of Austria — to second in seedings behind Slovakia’s Pavol Cervanek.

Among the Indians, all eyes will be on National champion Ashutosh Singh, while Rupesh Roy runs into the top seed here in the first round.

N. Vijay Sundar ousted Shivang Mishra in the qualifiers on Saturday and will run into the highest ranked Indian and eight-seeded Sunil Kumar Sipaeya in the main round.

Leading 5-2, Yannick Nellord staved off a determined Nikunj Siwach in the first set at 7-6(3) and then lost no time in wrapping up the second 6-0 to book a berth in the main draw wherein he meets Ashutosh.

The seedings: 1. Pavol Cervanek (Svk), 2. Rainer Eitzinger (Aut), 3. IvanCerovic (Cro), 4. Dekel Valtzer (Isr), 5. Darko Madjarovski (Srb), 6. Alexey Kedryuk (Kaz), 7. Marek Semjan (Svk), 8. Sunil Kumr Sipaeya (Ind).

The results: Final qualifying round (Indians unless specified): Robert Belak (Srb) bt Arnav Jain 6-2, 6-0; Rohan Gajjar bt Bhishman Desai 6-2, 7-5; N. Vijay Sundar bt Varun Walia 6-0, 6-2; Vignesh Chandrashekar bt Jagdeesan Kumar 7-5, 7-5; Yuki Bhambri bt Arvind Vishnu 6-0, 6-3; Rohan Gide bt Abhijeet Tiwari 6-3, 7-5; Ajai Selvaraj bt Jitender Mehlda 7-5, 7-5; Yannick Nelord bt Nikunj Siwach 7-6(3), 6-0.