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Monday, May 19, 2008
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Will the Indians perform better?

Special Correspondent

Yuki Bhambri takes on Vishnu Vardhan
Amritraj will start against Adam Feeney

NEW DELHI: Will the Indian players perform better? That will be the point of interest in the Challenger tennis tournament to be played at the DLTA Complex here from Monday.

It was disappointing to find the cream of Indian talent managing to win just one round in the first Challenger last week at the same venue.

The withdrawal of Rohan Bopanna and Karan Rastogi did spoil the Indian chances of making meaningful progress in the competitive field, but a better show was expected from Prakash Amritraj and company. Luckily, there will at least be a quantitative improvement this week, as the draw has three Indian qualifiers, apart from four wild cards, two direct entrants and one lucky-loser.

Of course, Bopanna and Rastogi will be missing as they are still nursing their injuries.

Wild card Yuki Bhambri will clash with the national grasscourt champion Vishnu Vardhan, who pulled off three wins in the qualifying event to ensure himself two ATP points. Amritraj will start against Adam Feeney of Australia and another Davis Cupper, Harsh Mankad, will face third seed Kristian Pless of Denmark.

Singh will be keen to build on his good work when he takes on Travis Rettenmaier of the U.S. while Mustafa Ghouse, with his new found confidence, will take on Colin Ebelthite of Australia.

Sunil meets Qureshi

Sunil Kumar will face the fifth-seeded Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi of Pakistan and qualifier Rohan Gide will meet the second-seeded Gilles Muller of Luxembourg while lucky-loser Tushar Liberhan will be up against the fourth-seeded Go Soeda of Japan.

Purav Raja could surprise Rajeev Ram of the US, who has opted out of playing doubles this week as he will be keen to rush to Paris for Roland Garros.

If anything, the Indian players will be fresh — from their downtime last week — against the tired foreign opposition, and that augurs well for the Indian challenge.

The seeds: 1. Yen-Hsun Lu (Tpe), 2. Gilles Muller (Lux), 3. Kristian Pless (Den), 4. Go Soeda (Jpn), 5. Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi (Pak), 6. Brendan Evans (US), 7. Alexandre Kudryavtsev (Rus) and 8. Ricardo Mello (Bra).

The results: Qualifying event (third and final round): Olivier Charroin (Fra) bt Kamala Kannan 6-1, 7-6(3); Rohan Gide bt Tushar Liberhan 7-6(7), 7-6(6); Purav Raja bt Yannick Nelord 6-2, 6-2; Vishnu Vardhan bt Karunuday Singh 7-6(7), 6-2.

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