Tuesday, Mar 09, 2004
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Tennis
By Amitabha Das Sharma
KOLKATA, MARCH 8. Familiar names dot the fixtures as the $10,000 ONGC-ITF Futures show moved here after a cross-country lap to the hitherto uncharted clay courts of Saturday Club — hosting its first international tennis event. The Indians, led by the tall and hard-serving Rohan Bopanna, have a strong presence and it is hoped the new venue will help in breaking the jinx that has prevented the local lads from taking the title since the action started in Delhi. The best so far has come from the seasoned Vishal Uppal, who reached the semifinals in the Chennai leg last week before losing to Polish challenger Filip Urban. Sunil Kumar is another who has been performing well. And with the red-clay being his favourite surface, the artistic southpaw can hope to better his quarterfinal exit last week. The seedings justifiably are a rehash of the Chennai draw with the top three names — Todor Enev of Bulgaria, Orest Tereshchuk of Ukraine and Bopanna — filling up the order. Enev was the finalist in the Delhi leg, where he beat Tereshchuk, then seeded third, in the semifinals. Bopanna, having the highest ranking among the Indians participating, exited in the quarterfinals. That has been Bopanna's best so far as he lost to compatriot Vijay Kannan, who has been pitted opposite wild card Manoj Mahadevan this time, in the first round at Chennai. The heavy-serving Davis Cupper, who has been out of action for some time owing to a stress fracture on his serving arm, had been to the city last month when he guided his office team — Indian Oil Corporation — to the team title in the PSPB inter-unit tennis last month. Bopanna, who will be playing his first round match against Austrian Rainer Eitzinger, can now hope that the city fetches luck anew. Sunil Kumar, having been seeded seventh, is the only other Indian apart from Bopanna to figure among the top eight players in the main draw by virtue of superior rankings. The other seeded players in the list are fourth-seeded Yordan Kanev (Bulgaria), fifth seeded Xin-Yuan Yu (China), sixth-seeded Febi Widhiyanto (Indonesia) and eighth-seeded Norikazu Sugiyama of Japan. The four Indians who got wildcards are: Tushar Liberhan, Ajay Ramaswami, Somdev Dev Varman and Mahadevan. The first round interestingly has redrawn a face-off between the left-handed Vinod Sridhar and the Ukrainian Tereshchuk. This gives the Indian a chance to avenge his first round exit in Delhi, where he was ousted by the same opponent in the third-set tiebreaker. With both the Delhi and Chennai leg winners Aisam Ul-Haq Quereshi and Dimitry Mazur of Uzbekistan not appearing here, the new venue certainly will have a fresh champion. In doubles, the top seeded Indian pair of Vishal Uppal and Mustafa Ghouse will be the team to watch. Having lifted the crown consecutively in Delhi and Chennai, it remains to be seen if they can pull off a hat-trick. Rohan Bopanna and Vijay Kannan are seeded second while the other Indian team of Sunil Kumar and Ajay Ramaswami are the fourth seeds. There were two Indians, Jaco Mathew and Gurmehar Singh, figuring among the eight qualifiers, which saw the completion of the final rounds on Monday. Austrian players, with Markus Egger and Stefan Wiespeiner prominent among them, had the strongest showing in the qualifiers as four players representing the country made it to the main draw.
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