The seeded players eased past their first-round opponents in the MCC-S.R.S memorial state-ranking tennis tournament at the MCC on Tuesday. Sixth seed Kamala Kannan got off to a slow start against Rithvik Anand, but had little trouble closing it out thereafter, to go through 1-6, 6-4, 6-1.
Top seed Vijay Sunder Prasanth blanked Shravan Karthikeyan 6-0, 6-0, while second seed Sriram Balaji dropped just one game against Mohd. Niyaz.
The results (first round): Murtaza Lohani bt Suresh Babu 6-1, 7-6(4); Tariq Jacob bt Irshan Hussain 6-1, 6-0; Ramkumar Ramanathan bt Ravishankar 6-0, 6-0; Neeraj Elangovan bt Sudharshan 6-3, 6-0; Vinod Sridhar bt Ashwin Nambi 6-0, 6-3; Mohd. Fariz bt A. Suresh 6-0, 6-0; G. Rajesh bt Bharat Srinivasan 6-2, 6-1; Kamala Kannan bt Rithvik Anand 1-6, 6-4, 6-1; Niranjan R. Ram bt Prithvi 6-1, 6-0; Elwin Antony bt Raj Vishnu 6-2, 6-0; Fahad bt Dodd A. Rodney 6-1, 6-2; R. Sharad bt Navin Kumar 6-3, 6-4; Vijay Sunder bt Shravan Karthikeyan 6-0, 6-0; Sriram Balaji bt Mohd. Niyaz 6-0, 6-1; R. Johnson bt C. Jasper 7-6(6), 1-0 (conceded); Viswajit Thirumurthi b Manoj Chandani 6-4, 7-6(5).
