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Monday, Jan 29, 2007
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Will Karan make it a hat-trick?

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Will it be a hat-trick of titles at the DLTA Complex for Karan Rastogi? That will be the major question when the $15,000 ITF men's Futures tennis tournament begins on the synthetic surface here on Monday.

The 20-year-old Karan had won the last two tournaments at the venue, including the one in the last week of December.

He went on to have a decent outing in the ATP Tour event in Chennai, but could not distinguish himself on clay at the Futures event in Kolkata last week.

With the Davis Cup Asia-Oceania group `I' tie against Uzebkistan scheduled to be played on red clay indoors at Namangan, it was indeed a disappointment that the likes of Rohan Bopanna did not opt to play the clay court event.

Karan, figuring in the third quarter of the draw, will start his campaign against qualifier Huai-En Chang of Chinese Taipei.

Purav plays Kedriouk

The top quarter has Sunil Kumar playing Vivek Shokeen for the second time in as many weeks while lucky-loser Purav Raja, the reigning national champion, takes on the top-seeded Alexey Kedriouk of Kazakhstan.

Divij Sharan, Aditya Madkekar, Vishaal Uppal, Sanam Singh and Vinod Sridhar will be vying with each other to make the semifinals from the second quarter.

Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan, who made the quarterfinals along with Sunil last week on clay in Kolkata, lost in the third and final qualifying round. In fact, only three Indians — Vinod Sridhar, Stephen Amritraj and Sanam Singh — could make it to the main draw from the qualifying event featuring 64 players.

A clutch of talented foreign players led by the champion last week, Todor Enev of Bulgaria, are expected to make it tough for the home players.

The seedings:

1. Alexei Kedriouk (Kaz), 2. Gabriel Moraru (Rom), 3. Karan Rastogi, 4. Divij Sharan, 5. Hyun-Woo Nam (Kor), 6. Todor Enev (Bul), 7. Artemon Apostu-Efremov (Rom) and 8. Alexander Kundryavtsev (Rus).

The results (qualifying event third and final round): Simeon Ivanov (Bul) bt Yuki Bhambri 6-2, 6-2; Vinod Sridhar bt Ivan Anikanov (Ukr) 7-5, 3-6, 6-4; Ervand Gasparyan (Rus) bt Punna Vishal 6-3, 7-5; Chu-Huan Yi (Tpe) bt Kamala Kannan 6-7(2), 7-6 (4), 6-3; Tsung-Hua Yang (Tpe) bt Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan 6-2, 6-3; Sanam Singh bt Purav Raja 6-4, 6-1; Huai-En Chang (Tpe) bt Tushar Liberhan 6-2, 6-7(5), 6-4; Stephen Amritraj bt V. M. Ranjeet 6-1, 7-5.

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