The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Pless given pride of place

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Sunday, Dec 02, 2007
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Pless given pride of place

Principal Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Danish Kristian Pless, who suffered right-ankle stress during his first-round match against Dieter Kindlmann of Germany early this week that forced him to pull out midway through the $50,000 ATP Challenger tennis, has been top seeded for December 3-8 event.

The back-to-back $50,000 ATP Challenger tournament is being sponsored by SAIL.

The second week of Challenger tennis in Delhi, however, has depleted field with the Czech Ivo Minar and Russia’s Igor Kunitsyn, the top two seeds this week, opting to fly out after not so inspiring results.

Pakistan’s Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi, who won this week, has been seeded second followed by Adrian Cruciat of Romania. Rohan Bopanna, who is frantically looking for some ATP points to enhance his chances of making it to the Australia Open qualifying tournament, is the sixth seed and was handed a favourable draw on Saturday.

Going by the form and rankings, Bopanna should make it to the quarterfinals where his likely opponent will be his doubles partner, Qureshi. Karan Rastogi is the other Indian who got direct entry into the main draw, while four others — Sunil Kumar Sipaeya, Ashutosh Singh, Vivek Shokeen and Harsh Mankad — made through on the back of wild cards.

In the qualifying tournament that began on Saturday, Ranjeet Virali Murugesan upset fourth-seeded Norikazu Sugiyama of Japan 7-6(5), 6-4 in the first round before getting past Vinod Sridhar 6-2, 6-0 for the place in the last eight.

He takes on Spaniard Daniel-Andreas Rodriguez-Redondo on Sunday for a place in the main draw.

Three other Indians, Rohan Gide, Purav Raja and Tushar Liberhan, also made through to the final qualifying round.

The results (qualifying):

Second round: Ilia Marchenko (Ukr) bt Vishnu Vardhan 7-5, 6-4, Rohan Gide bt Kamala Kannan 6-4, 7-6(2), Purav Raja bt Divij Sharan 7-5, 7-6(4), Tushar Liberhan bt Shivang Mishra 6-3, 6-4, Xin-Yuan Yu bt Rohan Gajjar 6-2, 6-3, Nathan Thompson (U.S.) bt Navdeep Singh 6-3, 6-4, Ranjeet Virali Murugesan bt Vinod Sridhar 6-2, 6-0, Daniel-Andreas Rodriguez-Redondo (Esp) bt Shao Xuan Zeng (Chn) 6-4, 6-4.

First round: Marchenko bt Vijay Sundar Prashanth 6-3, 3-6, 6-4, Vardhan bt Ajai Selvaraj 6-2, 6-1, Gide bt Vivek Satyajit 6-1, 0-1 retd., Kannan bt Hiroki Kondo 6-2, 6-4, Sharan bt Yannick Nelord 6-4, 6-2, Raja bt Gursharan Singh 6-1, 6-4, Liberhan bt Gurmehar Singh 6-0, 6-1, Mishra bt Vijay Kannan 6-2, 6-2, Yu bt Vijayant Malik 6-1, 6-1, Gajjar bt Nishank Mishra 6-2, 6-2, N. Singh bt Palash Tiwari 6-3, 6-4, Thompson bt Varun Walla 6-1, 6-0, Murugesan bt Norikazu Sugiyama (Jpn) 7-6(5), 6-4, Sridhar bt Shrikant Rathi 6-0, 6-0, Rodriguez-Redondo bt Bhareth Srinivasan Parthasarathy 6-0, 6-2, Zeng bt Rupesh Roy 6-1, 6-2.

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